No Room For Ernest

harborrat28

Jul 11, 2006

This three star vignette of the life of Ernest, a Chinese-American boy on the verge of adolescence in his immigrant Chinese mother's no-star cheaters' motel, was well-done. The boy desperately needs a male role model since his father has apparently long-since left his life and his mother is busy clawing a living out of the run-down motel. There is no place for sentiment in her world. She takes care of business, addressing overstays with a baseball bat. At one juncture she breaks the chain lock of a door of a room where the couple inside has over-stayed the hour or two they paid for. She stalks away, leaving the door wide open on the naked occupants, and says to her father (the handyman), "Room 6 needs a new lock!"

Although decidedly over-weight with glasses, Ernest is not unappealing. He works hard cleaning the sordid rooms, does his homework and writes stories about his life. At the beginning of the movie, he has a special friendship with Christine, a slightly older Chinese-American girl whose family owns a restaurant near the motel. By the movie's end, however, Ernest seems to have destroyed this relationship as a result of his acting on the basis of the inappropriate models available to him -- abandoned porn magazines, the advice of a dissolute, depressed and self-destructive young Korean man who is reeling from his own wrecked marriage and the interactions of the "guests" with their mistresses or prostitutes.

The movie ends without providing the viewer with a definite resolution, although, to me, not without the possibility that the most important person in his world -- his mother -- has recognized the depth of his need for her love and approval. Another person, however, might draw a different conclusion.

score 8/10

harborrat28 24 February 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1606277/