Blue Bayou review: Emotional story that did too much

An emotional movie that would’ve been much better if it did about 60 per cent less.

A heavy-handed but well-intentioned drama, Blue Bayou unapologetically tugs at your heartstrings – and then, before it’s done, goes for the full emotional jugular.

You will be overwhelmed, but you will also suspect that the level of emotional manipulation through its tragedy-porn sob story and the rising, swelling musical score wasn’t necessary to get you to where filmmaker Justin Chon wants you to be.

You can’t fault its purpose though – highlighting a great injustice that befalls American adoptees because of a grossly unfair loophole.

Justin Chon directed, wrote and starred in Blue Bayou. Picture: Focus

Tattoo artist Antonio LeBlanc (Chon) was born in South Korea but adopted to a white American couple when he was three-years-old. He lives in Louisiana and as far as markers of belonging goes, he couldn’t sound more American with his southern twang.

He’s married to Kathy (Alicia Vikander), a physical rehab nurse and is a doting stepfather to Jessie (Sydney Kowalske). Money’s tight because Antonio can’t get a better paying job thanks to his criminal record, and there’s another baby on the way.

They have challenges but a good life, emphasised through intimate, softly lit early scenes of the family.

Then a supermarket visit turns everything around when Antonio is unjustly arrested by a caricature of a cop. The charges are dropped but it’s too late – he is transferred into the custody of immigration officers for deportation.

Blue Bayou had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival Picture: Focus

It’s revealed Antonio’s adoptive parents never completed his citizenship paperwork when he was a child and he is technically, through no fault or deception on his part, an illegal immigrant.

The very real threat of deportation makes Antonio spirals, and he has to confront what it means for him and his family’s future, but also all the moments in his life that led him here.

Blue Bayou may have a poignant core, but it would’ve been a much better film if it did about 60 per cent less. It’s almost as if it didn’t have the confidence of its own story to trust that audiences would connect and empathise without laying it on as thick as molasses.

Everything that could go wrong does, an exhausting cavalcade of misfortune, menace and misery. It wasn’t necessary and it only highlighted how much Chon, who also directed and wrote the film, was doing.

Alicia Vikander’s performance is more nuanced than Blue Bayou’s script. Picture: Focus

Blue Bayou’s emotional punch would’ve been just as effective, if not more, if it had shed some of the story’s jeopardy – maybe the mother-in-law didn’t need to be a cold racist, perhaps the revelations about his childhood didn’t have to be that depressing, or his new friend (Linh Dan Pham) didn’t need to have fatal cancer.

And it’s a shame that Chon didn’t apply more discipline in the storytelling because Blue Bayou’s coercive, maudlin vibe robs the power from some artful, dreamlike sequences in a bayou that would’ve hit harder if the movie wasn’t already stewing in an overcooked story.

Of course, it’s not without many merits. The performances are more nuanced than the script, especially from Vikander and Pham while the young Kowalske is lightning.

Blue Bayou has a good heart, but it overplayed its hand.

Rating: 3/5

Blue Bayou is in cinemas now

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