Don't Be Misled, It's Not About Perseverance, But Complete Surrender

Lucky Lu is relentlessly tragic, so much so that watching it feels like enduring a classic Hong Kong melodrama tearjerker like The Orphan. Audiences who sit through it may well find themselves questioning whether the immigrant experience in America is truly this miserable, and whether New York is really just a perpetually grey, hopeless city.

The director, Lloyd Lee Choi, a Korean-Canadian filmmaker, previously earned significant acclaim on the North American short film festival circuit for his shorts. For his feature directorial debut, he secured Golden Horse winner Chang Chen as his lead, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and drew widespread attention. However, knowing how to direct a short film does not automatically translate to mastering a feature length. Shorts often thrive on a single narrative thread without needing extensive backstory. Features, by contrast, demand real narrative architecture: knowing how to pace material and organically combine disparate elements into a cohesive, meaningful whole.

The fundamental issue with Lucky Lu is that the writer-director merely piles on hardships without establishing logical context or building believable character arcs. The specific misfortunes Chang Chen's character faces are not unheard of in immigrant communities: being scammed on rent by a fellow countryman, having his bicycle stolen (a beat clearly inspired by the Italian Neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves), a failed restaurant venture, being turned away by loan sharks, losing his daughter in the city, and more. These beats were almost certainly drawn from real-world research. The fatal flaw, however, is concentrating every single one of these catastrophes onto a single individual, and having them erupt practically back-to-back within a 24-hour window.

Having a protagonist hit by an avalanche of bad luck over a single day is not uncommon in cinema, but it typically belongs in surreal dark comedies like the Hong Kong film Driverless or the Korean thriller A Hard Day. In those films, an overwhelming pileup of misfortune crosses from tragedy into absurd farce, tragedy played for laughs. Lucky Lu, however, is explicitly not trying to be a farce. Everything from the cinematography and editing to the naturalistic performances signals a commitment to grounded realism. Yet when tragedy is stacked to such an absurd degree, the melodrama turns unintentionally comical, making it impossible for the audience to stay emotionally invested.

That said, the film's depiction of New York itself is quite realistic. Much like American Girl shattered the romanticized illusions many Taiwanese viewers held about moving to the US, Lucky Lu lays bare the cold, unvarnished truth that emigration is no magic cure. In fact, the scene where Chang Chen finds a Chinatown apartment for a family of three at $1,400 a month is practically a miracle; in the San Francisco Bay Area, even a windowless garage conversion rented as an in-law unit can easily demand over $3,000 a month.

Some critics have argued that Chang Chen's insistence on settling in hyper-expensive New York is overly stubborn and irrational. In reality, many new immigrants in America stubbornly cling to major metropolitan centers despite lacking the financial means. They struggle to survive in high-cost cities like New York or San Francisco for complex reasons, so setting the story in New York is entirely plausible. Where the film strays into fantasy is its thematic insistence that "brave perseverance brings victory." America is not a place run on sentimental sympathy; it is driven purely by economics. No matter how tragic Chang Chen's circumstances become, no landlord is going to waive or delay his rent out of pity.

That does not mean he is entirely without options. Community organizations and government agencies exist to support those at the absolute bottom. However, accessing that safety net requires complete surrender, giving up middle-class dignity, accepting zero income, and declaring total poverty, rather than stubborn perseverance. Clinging to pride in such circumstances often only causes life to spiral further downward.

Whether Chang Chen's performance warrants Best Actor accolades remains open to debate, given that last year's award slate was relatively weak. Fala Chen's role is essentially a glorified cameo spanning just one or two scenes. The true female lead is young Kaila Wei, who plays their daughter. Most of the runtime consists of the father and daughter navigating the streets of New York's Chinatown together; while the young actress projects a maturity beyond her years, her grounded performance suits the heavy tone well.

Ultimately, Lucky Lu is not a mainstream Chinese-language blockbuster, but a low-budget Asian-American indie film. This subgenre has produced a steady stream of releases in recent years, including critically acclaimed titles like Minari and Dìdi. In terms of its unrelenting gloom, Lucky Lu particularly recalls last year's Rosemead starring Lucy Liu, though that film was even darker, with a light at the end of the tunnel that felt even further out of reach.

Kantorates@Cinespot.

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