“Chinatown, interior” or the adventures of an ordinary Asian in LA

Published on November 25, 2024 at 9:04 p.m. / Modified on November 26, 2024 at 07:59.

Upon its release in 2020, Charles Yu’s novel was hailed for its potential for adaptation into a film or, preferably, a series. It’s done. Nothing very surprising in that: the writer knows music, he is also a screenwriter. And in Chinatown, interiorwhich he controls, he mixes registers and degrees with a certain happiness.

His hero is completely banal. Born in Taiwan, Willis (Jimmy O. Yang) works as a waiter in his uncle’s restaurant in the heart of Los Angeles’ Chinatown. Taking care of his mother a little, with a father who is losing his mind, he dreams all day. To shine in kung fu, which he practices in imitation of his big brother; to break through as an actor in a series; to become someone, in short, and not the invisible that he currently is. In this blandness, however, there is a mystery: the brother has disappeared for years.

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