Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart

“I was filming in a Chinese home and saw all the shoes on the floor by the door. This image gave me the idea of making a movie about the people who belonged to those shoes . . . how their family lives and outside lives fit together” (Wang). Dim Sum is Wang’s one from the heart, part homage to Yasujirō Ozu, part idiosyncratic ideogram about the ways that Chinese Americans are Chinese and American. Wang elicited a marvelously nuanced performance from nonprofessional actress Kim Chew as Mrs. Tam, whose daughter Geraldine (Laureen Chew, Kim Chew’s daughter) is caught when her mother paradoxically pushes her both to marry and to stay home with her.