Rosemead

               
                  4 Stars out of 4

 In 1998, Lai Hang, a 49-year-old widow facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, shot her 17-year old son George, who suffered from severe schizophrenia. He had become obsessed with school shootings, and she worried he would act on these urges. On the day she received her prognosis, Hang took her son's life to spare him from a life alone with an untreated mental illness and to potentially spare others from the harm he might do. The case highlighted the shame and taboo surrounding mental illness within some Asian American communities, which hindered early treatment and support.

Those are the facts this movie is based on. 

But the way Lucy Liu humanizes this story is nothing short of extraordinary. 

I remember way back when I was learning how to be a psychologist, we had to take a class on cultural awareness. This class walked a fine line between awareness and stereotypes. Can we really make assumptions about how entire groups of people perceive mental health?

What we learned about Asian cultures, is that there is often a sense of shame attached to discussing mental health. Privacy is highly valued and families handle things within the family.

All of those things are so painfully true in this movie it almost hurts to watch it. 

Irene handles the tragedies in her life with an incredibly stiff upper lip. You can visibly see her fighting her own pain (mentally AND physically) without complaining. She's trying very hard to do what's right, as she solves her own personal trolley problem. Can I kill the person I love and care for most in the world if it means saving a lot of other lives?

Many people argued that she DID have other options. She could have gotten a conservatorship over her son and let authorities know he was a danger to himself and others. But she doesn't know and even understand her options here. As she says to the psychologist treating her son, "Just because you have a Chinese face, don't presume you understand us."

As a psychologist who has worked with refugees in several countries, this line hit hard for me. We assume our Western paradigms of mental health apply to everyone, but that is most certainly not the case. There are cultural forces, histories, and taboos so deeply embedded into some cultures we couldn't understand them in 100 years. Think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Mental health doesn't even arrive on the scene until the third rung of the pyramid.

So it's hard not to feel a deep sense of empathy for Irene. In a movie full of heartbreaks, perhaps the most heartbreaking scene comes after Irene is gone. She instructs her best friend to burn all the pictures of her and her family, as she doesn't want anyone to remember them. And the friend reluctantly does just that, although you can see she will never forget Irene. She too understands the cultural reasons her friend has asked this of her.

Less I end this review on a downer, I did want to point out some good news. Over the last five years I have seen a LOT of Asian children and families in therapy. A lot more than even ten years ago. The stigma around mental health is getting better, particularly with the younger generations, who may not have grown up in the country their family comes from. This movie is about a woman who, at least in her mind, had no other options.

More and more, I've seen people in these situations starting to realize that maybe they do. That gives me some hope.

But I would be lying if I said this movie and story didn't break my heart.