‘Coming Home Again’ serves up sublime story of family, grief
In Wayne Wang’s “Coming Home Again,” food is the glue that binds a family together, even when a cherished family member is dying. The film, which is based on a 1995 essay by Chang-rae Lee published in The New Yorker, focuses on son Chang-rae (actor-writer-director Justin Chon, “Ms. Purple”), who can be seen weeping uncontrollably as he climbs a steep hill in San Francisco while out on a jog, and his dying mother (Jackie Chung). Changrae has quit his job in New York City to come home to take care of his mother, who has stomach cancer.
Back home in a Nob Hill Arts and Crafts house, Chang-rae fills his mother’s intravenous bag, and devotedly recreates her recipe for marinated short ribs. He also repairs some flaking plaster. Chang-rae’s father is away from home at work and may be having an affair. Changrae’s older sister Jiyoung (Christina July Kim) lives in South Korea, where she found a job. But she, too, is on her way home to join the family for the New Year’s Eve dinner Chang-rae is preparing and to argue that her mother try an experimental treatment. For the most part Chang-rae is alone with his mother, who can barely make her way to the bathroom on her own, while he preps dinner.
The film is multi-linear. It interweaves flashbacks, which would seem banal if they weren’t filled with such meaning (and often food), with the present-day action such as Chang-rae shopping in an Asian market. Leaving the market, Chang-rae runs into one of his sister’s old flames. The slightly older man, who has a wife and child, reminds Chang-rae how he terrified him as a boy with a ghost story named “London Fog.“
The ghost stories are all too real now for Chang-rae. His mother is haunting her house and his thoughts. Chang-rae’s mother regrets sending him away to Phillips Exeter Academy, although she knew it was a great opportunity and helped him get into Yale. Chang-rae recalls an argument he has with his mother about her reluctance to express herself in English.
The film is so delicately edited that past and present merge like some delicious porridge. Love and grief also melt into one another. As the mother, Chung delivers a powerful performance entirely devoid of sentimentality. Like the recent release “The Farewell,” which is also about a dying matriarch, “Coming Home Again” reminds us that fearing one of life’s greatest losses is as universal as it is unifying.