Twilight graduate Justin Chon on his film set in LA’s Koreatown, hostess work, and Asian-American cinema after Crazy Rich Asians
- Chon’s Ms. Purple, about a Korean hostess who craves dignity, shines light on a generation left behind and has a refined beauty that echoes In the Mood for Love
- Korean-American, whose directorial debut Gook premiered at Sundance festival, hopes for day when he can make a film without it being labelled Asian-American
Justin Chon’s stark debut film Gook , which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, announced the Korean-American director and former Twilight series star as an impressive new force in dramatic cinema. His latest film, Ms. Purple, shows him continue to spread his wings and experiment with style and form.
Whereas Gook was a raw, touching urban drama, Ms. Purple has a refined beauty that reminds the viewer of an emotional Douglas Sirk melodrama or Wong Kar-wai’s lush In the Mood for Love . On Saturday, it played as the centrepiece of the Asian-American International Film Festival in New York.
The story, which Chon wrote with the actor and writer Chris Dinh, focuses on a hard-pressed hostess in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighbourhood who gradually finds her dignity and self-respect.
Chon, a first-generation American who grew up in southern California, says that he wanted to make a film that revolved around Koreatown as it is not the kind of place that usually shows up in movies.
“Koreatown in Los Angeles has become very gentrified,” he tells the Post. “But it used to be not the best of neighbourhoods. As gentrification happened, it made me wonder about the kids who grew up here. I know a lot of them, and they feel they have been left behind by society – the world turns but they just seem to stand still.”