Blue Bayou Movie Storyline. From award-winning writer / director Justin Chon, Blue Bayou is the moving and timely story of a uniquely American family fighting for their future. Antonio LeBlanc (Chon), a Korean adoptee raised in a small town in the Louisiana bayou, is married to the love of his life Kathy (Alicia Vikander) and step-dad to their beloved daughter Jessie. Struggling to make a better life for his family, he must confront the ghosts of his past when he discovers that he could be deported from the only country he has ever called home.
Blue Bayou is a 2021 American drama film written and directed by Justin Chon. The film stars Chon, Alicia Vikander, Mark O’Brien, Linh Dan Pham, Sydney Kowalske, Vondie Curtis-Hall and Emory Cohen. Blue Bayou had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in July 13, 2021 and was released in the United States on September 17, 2021, by Focus Features.
The movie is based on true stories Chon heard from Korean adoptee friends as well as research that revealed a broader crisis for Asian American adoptees of a certain age. In the U.S., the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 grants citizenship to all children adopted from overseas, but it does not protect anyone who turned 18 before the law was passed. One of the most well known cases was the deportation of Adam Crapser, who was adopted from South Korea. He endured abuse and also abandonment by two sets of adoptive parents, which none of them filed for his citizenship. Crapser, who had arrests on his record, was deported in 2016.
In United States, the film released in theaters alongside Cry Macho, The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Copshop to be played theatres totally 477 and it grossed $120K in Domestic Box Office in its opening weekend.
Film Review for Blue Bayou
“Where are you from?”
It’s a question that immediately puts Justin Chon’s Antonio LeBlanc on edge, and which he avoids answering in his uneasy job interview in “Blue Bayou,” Chon’s third directorial effort. Antonio was born in Korea, but the only home he’s ever known is the Louisiana backwaters. Adopted at three years old by white parents, Antonio spent his childhood jumping from foster home to foster home, until he built a family for himself with his loving, maybe all-too forgiving wife Kathy (a terrific Alicia Vikander) and her precocious daughter Jessie (Sydney Kowalske). With a new baby on the way and little cash coming in from his tattoo parlor job, Antonio is desperate for a lucky break. But that lucky break never comes.
Instead, Antonio finds himself arrested by ICE and faced with deportation to South Korea, a country he’s never known apart from faint memories of his mother in a hanbok, gazing mournfully from a boat. It’s a surreal image that pops up throughout “Blue Bayou,” Chon’s moving, evocative, but often heavy-handed treatise on the unique struggles of Asian-American adoptees.
Since breaking out with his 2017 film “Gook,” a provocative black-and-white drama following two Korean-American brothers on the first day of the 1992 L.A. race riots, Chon has made it a point to tackle wildly different aspects of the Asian-American experience — whether it be racial tensions, generational tensions, or in this case, cultural identity tensions. And for that, Chon is proving himself to be one of the most interesting indie Asian-American directors working today, even if “Blue Bayou” is not as entirely successful as his previous two films.
Written and directed by Chon, who steps back in front of the camera after refraining in his 2019 film “Ms. Purple,” “Blue Bayou” is a gauntlet of sorts. Chon had already made a splash with “Gook” and shown off his indie-arthouse bonafides with “Ms. Purple.” Now you can see him experimenting and attempting to grow as a director with “Blue Bayou,” which is stylistically more confident than Chon’s past efforts, the filmmaker weaving in surreal, dreamlike visions throughout his naturalistic portrayal of the struggling tattoo artist and his family.
More than just a challenge to himself as a director, “Blue Bayou” is a challenge to the audience: tackling a difficult and thorny subject matter as Asian adoptees and deportation, one that is politically charged enough to dominate and overpower an entire film. But in “Blue Bayou,” Chon keeps those political undercurrents at bay, preferring to focus on the intimate family drama surrounding Antonio.
Blue Bayou (2021)
Directed by: Justin Chon
Starring: Justin Chon, Alicia Vikander, Mark O’Brien, Linh Dan Pham, Sydney Kowalske, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Emory Cohen, Sylvia Grace Crim, Jim Gleason, Alexander Garcia
Screenplay by: Justin Chon
Production Design by: Bo Koung Shin
Cinematography by: Matthew Chuang, Ante Cheng
Film Editing by: Reynolds Barney
Costume Design by: Eunice Jera Lee
Set Decoration by: Bradford Johnson
Music by: Roger Seun
MPAA Rating: R for language throughout and some violence.
Distributed by: Focus Features
Release Date: July 13, 2021 (Cannes), September 17, 2021 (United States)
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