Cinderella is no Fish out of Water

In Revolution, comedian Margaret Cho rants: “No, I don’t want to play a manicurist. I don’t want to play a really pissed-off liquor store owner. I don’t want to play an exceptionally good student, I do not want to get off a tour bus and take numerous photographs, I do not ever want to utter the phrase ‘welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond.’” These words resonate throughout David Kaplan’s Year of the Fish, a movie that will make audience members cringe with frustration trying to figure out where else the actors have appeared.

The fact that Asian-Americans are grossly underrepresented in the entertainment industry is not unknown, and one of Year of the Fish’s greatest triumphs is its unbridled showcasing of New York’s Chinatown and its diverse inhabitants. In its fairy-tale plot, Ye Xian (An Nguyen), a young woman from China, arrives in New York to take on a job at a beauty parlor to better care for her ailing father. Unfortunately, she soon discovers that “beauty parlor” is code for “seedy massage parlor,” and her big American fantasy quickly dissolves into a harrowing nightmare as this modern day Cinderella-story pans out.

Kaplan uses the Chinese version of the Cinderella story (the oldest version known to date), meaning that a fish and a witch replace the jolly singing fairy godmother familiar to American audiences. Despite these changes, we all know the bare bones of the narrative, so watching Ye Xian predictably fall in love with her Prince Charming (Ken Leung from Lost), and the ugly stepsisters mistreat her can often feel unbearably cliché. But this is a minor flaw.

Kaplan experiments with the different cinematic tools at his fingertips. The film is entirely rotoscoped—an animation technique we’ve seen in Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly—but here, soft impressionistic brush strokes help evoke the fantastical nature of the script. Seeing cultural changes made to the story embedded in our brains is also exhilarating and suspenseful as Ye Xian’s journey takes her to back alleys and deserted warehouses. The film showcases numerous Asian superstars like Tsai Chin and Randall Duk Kim (Kung Fu Panda). But the new girl on the block, Nguyen, performs with outstanding subtlety and expertise. She perfectly embodies the fear, curiosity, and romantic hope parceled in her complex character.

Year of the Fish feels like a movement forward in American cinema. I say this because, despite its roots in Chinese fairy tales and modern-day Chinatown, the film does not market itself as a Chinese story but as an American one—and that message alone is powerful. The ubiquity of the story (and its adaptations) inspires boredom at times, but the film ultimately goes beyond its narrative to become original and endearing.