Archive for December, 2024
Jump In My Car: New Wave documentary film review
Elizabeth Ai’s engaging documentary New Wave starts out as an examination of the significance of new wave music in the Vietnamese American community, then broadens its focus to be all about generational trauma, unresolved family dysfunction, and the long term damage from the Vietnam War on the Viet refugee community in the U.S.
The film intertwines the stories of two prominent members of the Vietnamese new wave scene, Lynda Trang Đài & Ian “DJ BPM” Nguyen, as well as that of filmmaker Elizabeth Ai. Foregrounded is much wonderful synth pop music, many fabulous archival photos of Viet teens with big teased-up hairdos, and lots of clips of jerky 80s dancing. But although the movie starts out being about the scene, it morphs into something completely different by the end of its runtime.
Extensive photos and clips of big-hair Vietnamese American kids grooving to the beat totally capture the vibe of the scene circa the early 1980s, right after the fall of Saigon, when many Viet refugees landed in the U.S. As the film notes, the parents were dealing with unaddressed PTSD from the war and many of the kids were left to their own devices, including the filmmaker. The film delves into Ai’s fraught relationship with her mother. who opened a series of successful nail salons and eventually became responsible for helping many other refugees to do the same in the US. But due to the demands of supporting her siblings and extended family, as well as complete strangers, Ai’s mother had no bandwidth for raising AI and her sister, so one of their young aunties took up the task. It was through this auntie that Ai was first exposed to the new wave scene as a child, which was roaring along in the Vietnamese community in the US at that time.
Having only peripheral knowledge of the Viet American party/music scene (mostly via Paris By Night), it was great to see an in-depth look at the career of Việt Kiều goddess Lynda Trang Đài, who made her debut as a teen covering new wave classics and gained fame as “the Vietnamese Madonna,” along the way revolutionizing images of Vietnamese American women performers. Adopting a more modern look than previous singers who performed in floor-length áo dài and sang traditional Vietnamese music, Lynda took the community by storm by singing in short skirts and crop tops and rolling on the floor during her high energy sets. However, the film demonstrates that all has not been roses for Đài as she too bears the responsibility of caring for an extended family as well as being under the scrutiny of the entire Vietnamese American community.
Ai sensitively handles Đài’s story as well as Nguyen’s tale of his relationship with his dad, detailing Nguyen’s youthful rebellion and his estrangement from his father, a well-known author who objected to his son’s interest in the new wave party scene.
The film effectively weaves together the stories of Đài, Nguyen, and Ai, using new wave as a backdrop to looking at the experiences of Vietnamese refugees in the U.S. Its abundance of archival images and clips, combined with dramatized re-enactments of the main characters’ youthful lives, turns what starts out as a fun trip down memory lane into a much richer story, full of sympathy for the main subjects. Ai’s direction possesses a perspective and a depth of understanding that can only come from someone who witnessed firsthand the events she’s documenting, which has long been hallmark of the best of Asian American cinema.
beyondasiaphilia 
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