Reclaim (2022)

Nameless daughter in lost and found!

Reclaim is an uneven but interesting story about a 60-year-old woman who has lived her life for others. When she finds herself between a rock and a hard place with her extended family, her reaction to their needs is to look for a larger home.

Ye Lan Xin's life has become one of many hats---mother, daughter, wife, friend, in-law, teacher, but none of them are truly her own. Her retired husband refuses to help around the house and uses her more like a servant. When she came home in the opening scene to find he had gone through her books telling her which ones to keep, he lost all sympathy with me. You don't mess with a person's books-that's sacred territory!

Her grown daughter soon moves back in after quitting her job and trying to start up her own company hoping for mommy's financial as well as emotional support. The daughter, too, doesn't see her mom as a person but more as an assistant and ATM. The grown son who had been educated on his parent's dime in the States, also expects her to do his bidding. When her mother who suffers from dementia once again wanders away from the nursing home, Lan Xin wants her to move into their apartment. Her husband's "antique" collection and teapot collection take up nearly a whole room but he refuses to part with anything. He even buys a champion pigeon and lets it roam freely through the house without cleaning up its mess.

Lan Xin decides to buy a larger house so everyone will have their own room. Out of all them, she has the least privacy, unable to even watch Richard Gere movies when she wants to.

Much of the movie involves Lan Xin walking up and downstairs, traveling in elevators and circling around reflecting the ups and downs in her life as she searches for an affordable home. There are a couple of fantasy scenes awkwardly imposed into the movie that don't really fit with the realistic mood and also make it difficult to know if some of the things that are shown really happened. Ultimately, what Lan Xin was looking for was herself and coming to terms with the young girl who wanted to go to Paris to study art and the older woman who had married instead and teaches art on the side. When someone asks her name she goes blank because it has been so long since anyone called her by it. The scenes of Lan Xin creating a dollhouse that resembles her home tells much of what she desires and also what she comes to learn. The movie is beautifully shot, particularly the trip she and her mother take to their home town. The music can be syrupy at times, but in this type of movie fit the mood well.

Nina Paw as Lan Xin gave a subtle performance yet quietly powerful as small clues showed through her almost imperceptible reactions. While his character could be grating with denigrating demands and opinions, Johnny Kou played the self-involved husband perfectly. The sets were all intricately designed, especially the main apartment, important since much of the action took place in the almost claustrophobic spaces as Lan Xin tried to carve out one tiny place for herself.

There are times when you will want to shake Lan Xin for letting herself be used by nearly everyone around her in her need for approval and other times you will want to cheer for her as she gains clarity. Far from a perfect movie, and too long for the subject matter Reclaim is still worth trying out to watch as one woman takes the slow journey to reclaiming her life.

"All of us are alone when we reach the end. There's nothing to be afraid of." -Lan Xin's mother



8/16/22

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