A mid-life crisis that plays as real, droll

It’s been almost a quarter century since Vancouver writer-director Mina Shum’s 1994 breakout first feature, Double Happiness. But she slips effortlessly back into another gently comedic tale of Hong Kong immigrants in Vancouver with Meditation Park.

Pei-Pei Cheng (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and Tzi Ma star as Maria and Bing Wang, a mostly assimilated couple who moved to Vancouver decades ago to raise a family. But each is now caught in a mid-life crisis. Or more precise to say, they’re both caught in his mid-life crisis, after Maria finds an unfamiliar pair of female underwear in his pants pocket and assumes the worst.

Maria decides she needs to do something for herself. At 60 she can’t drive or even ride a bicycle, hasn’t had a job since she married and still stumbles with her English. So she joins a group of Chinese ladies who engage in an illegal scheme to rent out their yards as event parking. Don McKellar pops up as Gabriel, their neighbourhood rival.

Shum deftly juggles several narrative threads, always providing enough information so that her characters register as three-dimensional. Chief among them is Sandra Oh as Maria’s daughter Ava, now starting a family of her own and too distracted by that to notice that her mother is in a state.

What’s even more refreshing is that the director isn’t interested in painting anyone as a villain. Gabriel’s intense mannerisms are explained in a touching scene, and even Bing ’s infidelity, while not excused, is at least mitigated somewhat by what Maria discovers.

And while Ma is up for a Canadian Screen Award for his role, for me Cheng functions as the story’s quiet beating heart, nailing the part of an uncertain career housewife looking to stretch her wings. She’s the one with the most to lose in the domestic upset at the centre of the film, and the most potential growth to experience from it. Her journey is perfectly balanced between tragedy and hope.