Her resistance can be touchingly incongruous, as when she faces a mirror and pretends to be Joan of Arc. But when a romance with a white Canadian graduate student turns serious, her rebellion is painfully real. As Jade, Sandra Oh won a 1994 best-actress Genie, Canada's top film award. Like any wise child, Jade knows how to get around her parents. She placates an angry dad by demurely tempting him with a favorite food and tells her mother that on a prearranged dinner date with an acceptable Chinese man, he asked her to pay the bill.
Mom is aghast.
Canadian and U.S. critics agree that Shum neatly sidestepped multiculture sentimentality to make a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve but is generous to both sides of the generational divide.