ROSEMEAD Review: True Story About a Mother's Love That's Too Centered on the Son

It's always odd when a film is based on a true story that is either old enough or simply wasn't major enough news that we don't all know it.

Does it count as "spoilers" for the movie to direct people to the 2017 LA Times article that Rosemead is based on when its headline "gives away" the finale of the film or is it the same as acknowledging that a movie is based on a book someone may not have read?

Arguably it's a question of ethics for filmmakers who seek to deliver tension about what will happen next. These are all thoughts that swirled around my head as the inevitable conclusion of Rosemead became clear in its final act.

The feature debut of cinematographer Eric Lin follows Taiwanese mother Irene (Lucy Liu) and her US born son Joe (Lawrence Shou) in the wake of the death of their beloved husband/father Charles (Orion Lee). The film isn't about grief exactly, though; its focus is ostensibly how Irene responds to Joe's increasingly concerning schizophrenic episodes and obsession with mass shootings after his father's death.

Lin, cinematographer Lyle Vincent, editor Joseph Krings, and sound editor Josh Heilbronner bring Joe's episodes to the screen with a combination of original and well-worn techniques. Albeit some of those well-worn methods for bringing audiences into Joe's world are based in reality, including the almost demonic, indistinct whispers that creep into Joe's mind, which are based on the documented lived experience of people with schizophrenia.

At worst, these sequences are distracting, though, as when a fisheye and extremely shallow focus center Joe in a world going hazy. On the other end, Krings' editing (which at times of stress rapidly flashes between images of Joe, what he's trying to think about, and what is intruding into his mind) is effective not only in placing the audience in Joe's head, but also communicating the emotional turmoil of his desperate attempts to control his thoughts.

Yet all this attention on Joe feels misguided. The most interesting thing about Rosemead is Irene's response to her son's mental illness informed by her Chinese immigrant community's culture around psychological issues and her own cancer diagnosis. Irene's cultural isolation and the revelation that she has terminal cancer are what drive her to her ultimate decision about how she can help her son, and Liu's performance is at its most compelling in these scenes with other moms and her doctor, rather than with Shou.

The other immigrant mothers of American-born children vary in their comments and questions about Joe. Some are gossipy and a very visibly fake form of kind when they inquire about Joe because their kids told them he disappeared from a hangout the other night. Others are more genuinely caring and seek to help in whatever ways they deem appropriate, which may be scoffing at the idea of therapy and telling Irene she sounds like "a foreigner" for even considering it.

Liu portrays a concern that's equally for her son's wellbeing and their social standing in these scenes that's heartbreaking. Similarly, when she receives the news about her impending death and struggles to contain sobs, there's a subtlety of performance under the larger emotion, as we see the fear about what this means for her son register halfway through her immediate reaction for herself.

The significant time spent with Joe also makes some choices of what to include and not include baffling rather than purposeful. In particular, there's a moment where Joe is arrested and we don't see the arrest take place, we only see the aftermath of Irene and Joe at a sheriff's station. It's the kind of thing that makes sense to leave out in a film fixed to the point of view of the concerned mother. But because Rosemead spends so much time with Joe, it doesn't feel like a choice as much as something that was skipped for budget reasons.

Rosemead is a mixed bag. It straddles the line of too familiar and too strange (and not always in a good way) to land anywhere well, and the problem of focus only exacerbates this. Liu and Shou's performances sell the emotional reality of this two-person family, their love for one another and the desperate measures they are both willing to take to protect that family, but the movie would be much stronger if it centered just one of those two family members.

The film opens Friday, December 5, only in movie theaters, via Vertical Entertainment. Visit Fandango for locations and showtimes.