Joy Ride review: A hilarious and unapologetic tale about cultural differences

JOY RIDE

(15) 92mins

★★★★☆

OPENING on a scene where two adorably shy little Asian girls meet for the first time in a playground, a boy yells at them: “No chinkies allowed!”

One girl looks crestfallen, while the other stares at him and says “f*** off”, punches him in the face and steps over his squirming body to climb on the swing.

Alamy

This film starts as it means to go on: Sassy, punchy, sweary and unashamed.

Directed by Adele Lim, the writer of the phenomenally successful Crazy Rich Asians, this is the tale of four thirty-something girlfriends having a lot of misadventures in China.

Ambitious lawyer Audrey (Emily In Paris star Ashley Park) was adopted as a baby by a white couple in America and has never learned Chinese nor embraced her Asian roots.

In a bid to secure a deal for her company in Beijing, she invites her two Chinese-American besties Lolo (Sherry Cola) and Kat (Stephanie Hsu) to translate and party with her — along with Lolo’s tag-along cousin, Deadeye (Sabrina Wu).

Lolo, who hasn’t changed a tremendous amount since knocking out the racist kid in the playground, accuses Audrey of being far “too white” — testing her by asking if she knows all the character names in Succession. She does.

Yet she has never even considered finding her birth mother.

So Lolo has decided the trip would be the perfect time to do this, with the group travelling across the vast country.

Soon the road trip takes a wrong turn and becomes one of sex, drugs, flashing, puking, fraud and considerable rolling around with a male basketball team.

The film falls into The Hangover and Bridesmaids tropes, including having one strange, slightly unnerving member of the gang — K-pop obsessed Deadeye — and the journey goes so awry that they end up shoving bags of cocaine up their bums.

But Joy Ride still manages to have its own identity.

The cultural differences are highlighted with great, unapologetic humour and it refuses to walk on eggshells when dealing with race or stereotypes.

With a feeling that it didn’t quite know how to end — and the last joke not really landing — there’s a hope that perhaps it isn’t over for this motley crew of gal pals.

I’m ready to strap in for another Joy Ride should the time come.

PARIS MEMORIES

(15) 105mins

★★★★☆

FRENCH filmmaker Alice Winocour offers an intimate, fictionalised response to the 2015 Paris terror attacks, homing in on the aftermath through the soul-searching efforts of one survivor.

Mia (Benedetta’s Virginie Efira) is a translator who, due to a change of plan, is caught in an attack at a restaurant.

Handout

While the film doesn’t linger on the brutality, it is no less bleak or upsetting to witness the stark violence.

Three months later, Mia has returned to Paris and her husband but is struggling to put the pieces of her life back together.

Much of the film is about remembering, feeling, and Efira unpacks Mia’s complex emotions and memories with restraint and patience.

Stéphane Fontaine’s delicate, introspective cinematography bolsters the story-telling without veering into melodrama.

Winocour’s carefully cur­at­ed survivors, orphaned children and estranged spouses offer a refreshingly diverse picture of the first and second-hand wounds trauma can leave.

Mia’s story might tie up a little too neatly but Paris Memories is still a comman­ding and empathetic tribute.