Years before I watched my first film from the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai, I encountered a collection of stills on Tumblr from his 1994 film Chungking Express. I reblogged the images onto my blog without any previous knowledge of it, on the sole basis of the film’s aesthetics. The images featured one of its protagonists, a boyishly handsome Takeshi Kaneshiro, holding a corded phone up to his left ear with a listless gaze. Below him, the subtitles read: “Password is ‘Love you for 10,000 years.’” 

This peculiarly romantic line of dialogue is among a handful of recognizable Wong Kar-Wai scenes that, years later, frequently surface on my social media feeds. Stills like these have helped spark modern online intrigue toward a certain genre of East Asian cinema and the (primarily male) directors that compose this category. Even though the average American moviegoer doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite for foreign films, a subset of Western viewers appears to be more receptive to East Asian works — at least according to social media.

In recent years, too, more Asian American directors are producing films that pay stylistic homage to influential East Asian works. One of the multiverses in Everything Everywhere All At Once, for example, was heavily inspired by Wong’s In The Mood for Love, a film about two beautiful people quietly yearning, but never acting upon their unrequited love. (Various posts on Twitter have gone viral for showcasing the two works’ stylistic parallels.) Alan Yang’s Tigertail, released on Netflix in 2020, attempted to emulate the sprawling domestic drama of an Edward Yang film through an expansive multigenerational storyline.

There are many great East Asian directors, but recently, I’ve found myself drawn to the striking work of two Sinophone filmmakers: Wong Kar-Wai and his less-discussed Taiwanese contemporary, Tsai Ming-Liang. Two of their early feature films, despite being produced over two decades ago, capture the unbearably bleak mood of life in 2022. Their overall vibe, so to speak, is steeped in melancholic languor, featuring characters that are so close in proximity, yet remain perennially distant toward other people’s inner lives. 

Tsai’s 1992 debut feature Rebels of the Neon God and Wong’s 1994 Chungking Express both chronicle the lives of wayward urban youths coming of age during an economically prosperous yet politically uncertain time. Set respectively in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the films, released within a few years of one another, hint at the looming forces of globalization and the new political hierarchies ushered in at the turn of the century. These films also tackle themes that resonate with a pandemic-afflicted audience: alienation, nostalgia, longing, unfulfilled romance, and a sense of ennui toward current events. And despite predating social media, Tsai and Wong both manage to presciently capture the loneliness in modern relationships.

Tsai’s Rebels of the Neon God is split into two parallel storylines featuring four city-dwelling youths — two petty thieves, a student, and a roller disco rink employee — whose lives slightly overlap in strange and unexpected ways. Hsiao-Kang, a disaffected high school student, is in trouble with his parents for ditching cram school. He frequents an arcade that is robbed after-hours by two boys his age who make a living off of petty thievery. In a fit of random road rage, one of the thieves smashes Hsiao-Kang’s father’s side-view mirror and speeds off on his motorcycle, girlfriend (the rink employee) in tow.

Similarly, Chungking Express follows an ensemble cast of characters. The film is divided into two sequential storylines featuring two disparate Hong Kong couples, whose lives fleetingly intermingle. Cop 223 listlessly wanders through the city buying cans of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1, the day he expects to get over an unrequited love. He meets a woman in a bar sporting sunglasses and a blonde wig, who is secretly a drug dealer. The next vignette introduces us to Cop 663, who is heartbroken after his relationship ended with a flight attendant girlfriend. He befriends a server at a local food stand he frequents. The server, unbeknownst to the cop, is in possession of a spare set of keys to his apartment, which was left behind by his ex.

It’s worth noting that Wong and Tsai aren’t usually discussed comparatively despite the complementary nature of these specific films. (Tsai is often characterized as an experimental auteur, mentioned in line with Taiwanese contemporaries like Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien; meanwhile, Wong has achieved a level of industry success that grants his work broader international recognition.)

Wong tends to romanticize his characters, interspersing dreamy, music-laden interludes into their daily activities. There is, on the contrary, little glamour to the lives of Tsai’s protagonists. The thieves inhabit perpetually flooded and damaged apartments. They dawdle around internet cafes, arcades, and cheap motels, and get drunk often. They spend their nights committing acts of debauchery and thievery to scrape by.

Rebels of the Neon God is set in post-martial law Taiwan in the 1990s, wherein citizens were granted significantly more civic freedoms than before. Yet, Tsai’s protagonists respond with little joy to these newfound liberties. Hsiao-Kang is clearly disinterested in attending college, and seems fascinated by the lives of delinquents his age. This is perhaps an allusion to the “darker underpinnings of Taiwan’s assimilation into the global market,” observed the New Yorker’s Dennis Zhou, referencing Tsai’s interest in “drifters, idlers, and insomniacs on the fringes of the world’s supply chain.” His use of dialogue is also spare, highlighting the aimlessness of characters’ behaviors and the tedium of their lives.

Chungking Express, while decidedly more aesthetic, also carries slight political undertones. Wong has said that the film is about Hong Kong in that “it reflects the way people felt at that time.” Chungking was released three years before 1997, when Hong Kong was ceded to mainland China after 156 years of British colonial rule. Critics have interpreted the movie’s “chaotic, confusing and … unclear environmental setting” as commentary on the decade’s pervasive uncertainty, heightened by sudden visual shifts between blurry, slow-motion shots and facial close-ups.

Rebels and Chungking are not necessarily foreboding films. Still, there is the underlying sense that something is wrong or slightly off within these realities, even though the stakes seem relatively low. There are no supervillains or potential world-ending catastrophes to stop. Rather, it’s the encroachment of technology or globalization that adds to the characters’ pervasive alienation. One scene in Rebels shows the motorcycle-riding thief and his girlfriend having sex next to a TV with porn playing on it. It’s unclear whether they’re truly interested in sex with each other or simply emulating what’s suggested to them via mass media. In another scene, one of the thieves asks his friend to find him a girl to hug so that he can feel the warmth of a woman’s body after he was beaten up on the street. 

Isolation and ennui in Chungking are depicted in a more lighthearted (and arguably more romantic) manner, but the unsettling mood persists. Film scholar Michael Blancato wrote that the film is representative of “a culture subject to temporal compression and tele-surveillance — characteristics that define modern-day globalization. [Wong’s] films illustrate that the national cost of participation in a modern, global economy is affective discontent among citizens.”

It’s slightly ironic, then, that scenes from Chungking Express have become so widely disseminated on the internet, reaching audiences across the globe who discover within these characters something to relate to. Wong’s hallmark shots are colorful and captivating, easy to screenshot into shareable content. Even when seen out of context on a Tumblr or Instagram feed, the visual strength of his cinematography, coupled with the muted dialogue between characters, enchants the viewer. (Stills and clips from Wong’s films are often shared on popular film Instagram accounts including the Criterion Channel’s, and some are solely devoted to posting his oeuvre.) 

While Tsai’s work is less shared than Wong’s, a similar sentiment applies. The current streaming ecosystem makes his films readily available to a mass international audience, despite how Tsai, who considers himself a non-commercial director, has struggled to attract a mainstream Taiwanese viewership. 

Social media compresses their old works into something consumable and relatable for a Western audience, occasionally stripping away the naturalistic cadence of the film. (Rebels is noticeably slower than Chungking, with Tsai purposefully dwelling on characters doing “normal” things, like walking around or lying about their apartments.) Still, there is something poetic about this digital transfiguration. Thanks to the popularity of streaming services, Rebels of the Neon God and Chungking Express, two distinct films about alienation within urban spaces, can be watched alone in the privacy of one’s home. As lonely as that may seem, I find it comforting; there is a communal feeling within the individual experience of rediscovering cult classics that so keenly reflect how life is isolating, no matter how connected we seem to other people.

Rebels of the Neon God is available to stream on Prime Video. Chungking Express is on HBO Max. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.

BeReal, as the app’s name suggests, wants me to post my truth. Once a day at random, I am prompted to “be real,” to capture my unfiltered life synchronously through my phone’s selfie and back camera. There is, so BeReal claims, a distinctly authentic self behind social media’s smoke and mirrors, waiting to be revealed. 

BeReal’s premise is simple. Every day, users are randomly prompted to snap a photo within a two-minute time frame, although the window to post remains open for hours. Users can add a caption, comment on friends’ day-of posts, and interact through RealMojis, or personalized reaction photos. Upon posting, two feeds are unlocked, one personalized with friends’ posts and one a Discovery feed that features strangers in the midst of mostly mundane tasks. The feeds are updated once a day and posts expire once the next BeReal alert is sent out, presumably for users to put their phones down and live their “real” lives after a few minutes on the app. 

BeReal falls into the genre of “anti-Instagram” apps, novelty photo platforms that attempt to fulfill a niche social function that Instagram lacks. In this case, it’s authenticity and an ad-free experience. “BeReal won’t make you famous,” the app declares. “If you want to be an influencer you can stay on TikTok and Instagram.” 

Every year or so, a hot new social startup emerges from the woodwork with an overconfident vision of a better, more authentic way of being online. It rarely sticks. In early 2021, the app du jour was Dispo, which simulated the experience of using a disposable camera by having users wait for photos to develop. Dispo benefited from co-founder David Dobrik’s YouTube fame, but a scandal led investors to quickly distance themselves from the startup, even with Dobrik resigning. Later that year, Poparazzi, an app that encouraged users to take paparazzi-like shots of their friends, took off on TikTok. It shot to the top of the App Store for a few weeks, but the hype soon subsided. 

This year, the buzzy, VC-backed darling is BeReal, which is currently the second most-downloaded social networking app on the App Store, behind TikTok. It launched in December 2019, but nearly 75 percent, or 7.67 million, of BeReal downloads occurred this year, according to recent Apptopia data shared with TechCrunch. The app recently closed on a Series B funding round and is expected to quadruple its valuation to around $630 million, reported Business Insider in early May. 

“We’re always looking to connect with friends in a casual way,” said Kristin Merrilees, 20, a junior at Barnard College and BeReal user, who also writes about culture and the internet. “I think Snapchat briefly was that space until my friends stopped using it. Now, it’s BeReal that lets you peek into people’s lives throughout the day.”

What is real, though, and what is fake when we spend so much of our time tethered to screens? In a commodified social media landscape, authenticity is as much of a marketing buzzword as it is an on-screen value, touted by people, brands, and, of course, apps. BeReal assumes that the authentic self can be divulged under the right conditions — that catching users off-guard will lead them to abandon all pretense. And so far, users seem to be buying into its pitch.

“It has the vintage feel of early Instagram,” said Sasha Khatami, 21, who works in digital marketing. “I think it’s an interesting shift for people like me, who are used to posting curated content for so long, now toward a reminder to post in the moment.”

BeReal’s unsubtle marketing strategy has led it to be a breakout hit among college students. The startup pays students to serve as campus ambassadors, refer friends, and host promotional events. Besides its trendiness, however, the app’s concept and key functions are anything but original. It’s a well-timed reinvention of FrontBack, an app that popularized the simultaneous selfie and back-camera photo before shuttering in 2015. Similarly, its unpredictable daily push alert mimics the engagement strategy of Minutiae, an anonymous daily photo-sharing app launched in 2017. 

Still, BeReal is not much of a threat to the established hierarchy of social platforms that have built a decade-old fiefdom off our data and attention. BeReal is not intent on remaking the social internet. Instead, it operates on the sidelines of this seemingly unshakeable world order, and is backed by some of the same firms that funded Instagram and Twitter. (Venture capitalists are perpetually on the hunt for the next big social startup, despite its history of false starts.) Its goal, like that of most startups, is to become commercially viable, which means it eventually has to find ways to make money off of its users.

The app’s greatest appeal may be its current novelty and the fact that it isn’t Instagram or Snapchat. Still, BeReal can’t seem to escape the pall of the major social networks. Merrilees has noticed an uptick in people sharing their BeReals on Instagram. Some are even remixing them into TikToks, as a kind of memory reel. “A lot of people are migrating content across different platforms,” Khatami tells me. “It feels very natural to me. I started making TikToks of my BeReal photos after seeing people post theirs.”

Since BeReal is so insular, usage is highly dependent on individual friend circles. Once people start to tire of it, chances are, their friends will too. There’s a FOMO-ish undercurrent to the hype. People download BeReal because they’re curious. They don’t want to miss out. It’s nostalgia bait, too, for those old enough to remember the ad-free days of Instagram. The Times’s John Herrman found it to be a “reproduction of the experience of joining one of the dominant social networks when they all still felt like toys.” BeReal’s daily reminder tries to enforce a reflexive instinct to post and use the app, similar to how Snapchat users feel beholden to maintain their streaks. These alerts, however, seem more contrived than spontaneous. They run counter to not only BeReal’s stated mission but to the psychological literature on authenticity and self-perception.

Authenticity is a fluid, ever-evolving social construct that cannot be clearly mediated, least of all through an app. In a critical examination of the concept, researchers Katrina Jongman-Sereno and Mark Leary argued that authenticity “may not be a viable scientific construct,” citing the varying definitions used by psychologists, sociologists, and behavioral researchers in their assessments. So, why does this concern over online authenticity seem so pervasive? The internet flattens any distinction between irony and sincerity, human and machine, real and fake. If it’s all artifice, why do we care?

Our fixation on authenticity-posting is perhaps a reflection of our anxieties about the internet and how it debilitates our modern sense of self. Authenticity is a metric to measure content and the celebrities, influencers, brands, and individuals behind the facade. “Lately, it feels like more people are noticing and calling out performance on social media, like how ‘casual Instagram’ was identified as a trend,” said Maya Man, a Los Angeles-based artist and programmer. The notion of authenticity mollifies the viewer, assuring them that there is some truth to what is seen online. For the poster, it’s an ego-driven ideal to aspire toward or embody — even with content they’re paid to promote.

BeReal’s attempt at curating an authentic space is far from perfect, but it gets at an unanswerable ontological question: Are we ever truly ourselves on the internet? “I view every single thing you post online as contributing to this distributed internet avatar that you’re performing,” Man said. “Performing isn’t a negative thing. It’s the fact that you have a mediated audience in mind, even if you’re posting on a private account.” 

Users who started using the internet at an early age, or “digital natives,” might share Man’s gestalt theory, and are more accustomed to reconciling these varying personas. It’s why people have Twitter alts, finstas, and specific accounts dedicated to food, aesthetics, or memes. Some of these disaggregated identities might be perceived as more authentic than others. Since the online self is fractured across multiple platforms and mediums, authenticity matters in that it’s a coherent, ready-made identity for consumption by a public audience. 

In a critique of BeReal, Real Life magazine editor Rob Horning posits: “An even more real version of BeReal would just give your friends access to your cameras and microphones without you knowing it, so they can peep in on you and see how you act when you think no one is watching. If the panoptic gaze is falsifying us, only voyeurism sets us free.”

These voyeuristic conditions were what Man sought to investigate in creating Glance Back, a Chrome extension that unpredictably snaps a webcam photo once a day when the user opens a new tab. “I was very unsettled by that feeling that someone is looking at you for a long time and you’re not looking back,” she told me. “That’s what my computer feels all day, and we don’t have a chance to engage with its view.”

Even under Glance Back’s unexpected voyeurism, what it captured didn’t feel any more or less authentic than BeReal’s self-directed gaze. Glance Back catches me in a distracted, bleary-eyed state, whereas I convey a more earnest, alert version of myself on BeReal. After a few weeks of observing my life’s repetitious contours through my browser and phone, it became apparent to me that authenticity is a facile concern, one that’s easier to grapple with than our constant state of surveillance. Rather than fret over our perceived authenticity, perhaps a better question is: Why are we so willing to document ourselves to prove what we already know? 

The first depiction of an Asian American mother-daughter relationship I saw on-screen was in Gilmore Girls. I’m aware of the irony, but the portrayal of Mrs. Kim, the strict, overbearing, religious mother of Rory’s best friend Lane, shook my 11-year-old self to her core. Mrs. Kim was, to put it bluntly, the antagonist of her daughter’s life. Lane had limited agency as a teenager. She wasn’t allowed to go out with friends and couldn’t publicly date boys, not in the way Rory could. In hindsight, the depiction was merciless in its othering mockery of Asian immigrant parenting, positioned in stark contrast to Lorelai’s casual, cool-mom demeanor. It didn’t help that Amy Chua’s 2011 book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother gave a racialized name to this aggressive style of parenting: the tiger mom.

Stories of maternal legacy have long dominated the Asian American cinematic oeuvre, since The Joy Luck Club over two decades ago. The diaspora’s identity, in many ways, exists in stark contrast to that of our first-generation mothers, even in a show like Gilmore Girls. Over the past decade, these narratives have evolved into something much more nuanced and forgiving. There is enough conflict and contention to drive the story forward, but room is left for reconciliation and filial acceptance. Turning Red and Everything Everywhere All At Once are the two most recent films that exemplify this shift. In the early 2000s, however, when Asian American films were few and far between, Alice Wu’s pioneering Saving Face attempted to give equal weight to the foibles and fantasies of both mother and daughter.

Saving Face, a 2004 romantic dramedy, features a Chinese American mother-daughter duo who are, unbeknownst to each other, each reckoning with an illicit romantic relationship. Wil (Michelle Krusiec) and her widowed mother Hwei-Lan (Joan Chen) privately worry that their choices will disappoint and dishonor their family — hence the overarching theme of “saving face.” They live in fear of ostracization from their tight-knit Chinese community in Flushing, Queens, even if abiding by certain cultural norms and expectations comes at the expense of their own individual desires.

Wil is a young and successful surgeon, who has yet to come out as publicly gay to her family. She frequently rebuffs her mother’s efforts to set her up with young Chinese men. After work one night, Wil finds her mom sitting alone in front of her Manhattan apartment. She learns that Hwei-Lan was kicked out by Wil’s grandparents because she is pregnant. Hwei-Lan refuses to reveal the identity of the man who fathered the child, enraging her father, who finds it unacceptable that his 48-year-old daughter is pregnant and unmarried. Meanwhile, Wil starts dating Vivian (Lynn Chen), a dancer and the daughter of Wil’s boss, but struggles to be publicly affectionate with her. 

Vivian, in many ways, symbolizes Wil’s liberated potential, although Wil is hesitant at almost every turn in the relationship to showcase a deeper commitment to her. Their romance is far from perfect, and its development is stymied by Wil’s busy work schedule and role as her mother’s newfound caretaker. 

Saving Face is often praised as a boundary-breaking, sapphic love story between two Asian American women. It is also, I would argue, a classic diaspora story with protagonists who find themselves caught between two worlds: the traditional values of the motherland versus an individualized, Western way of life. They are asked to determine their allegiances, at the risk of being shunned by their family and community. 

Wil’s queer identity runs counter to her mother’s expectations. She has yet to fully come out, and so she sidelines her sexuality, until it impedes her burgeoning relationship with Vivian. Hwei-Lan, on the other hand, is punished for pursuing a secret sexual relationship by her elderly father. She exists in a paralyzing state of guilt and has no one to turn to, except for her daughter. Hwei-Lan’s father won’t allow her to come home until she finds herself a husband before the baby’s due or proves that she conceived by “immaculate conception” — two conditions that are seemingly impossible to fulfill. She seems consigned to her fate as the black sheep of the family, and Hwei-Lan spends her days satisfying her pregnancy cravings and binge-watching soap operas. 

A criticism of diasporic storytelling is its tendency to default to an unsatisfying binary, one that poses the old and the new as irreconcilable. Saving Face derives the bulk of its momentum from these cultural anxieties, but slightly inverts the mother-daughter dynamic to offer up a fresh perspective. Cohabiting with her mother brings unexpected complications to Wil’s life. At first, it was an obligatory act of filial piety, but Wil grows accustomed to taking care of her pregnant mother’s emotional and physical needs. They sleep in the same bed, and Wil escorts Hwei-Lan to her gynecology appointments. They begin watching soap operas together, using the plot as a template to discuss hard decisions about life and love. Hwei-Lan’s stoic mask begins to slip. In one scene, she confesses her fear that she’ll be a terrible mother. “I don’t even like babies,” Hwei-Lan admitted to Wil. “You were different. You sprung from the womb already grown up.”

These snippets of domesticity, interlaced with moments of vulnerability and comedic humor, characterize the women beyond their roles as mother and daughter. Wil becomes involved with finding Hwei-Lan a potential husband, scouting candidates in her spare time and helping her get ready for dates. Before Hwei-Lan’s first date, Wil pauses and stares at her mom, as if she’s seeing her for the first time — not as a mother, but as a woman. “Ma, you’re beautiful,” Wil says, her hand caressing Hwei-Lan’s face. It’s a reaction that is tenderly exaggerated, almost bathetic, but it works. The statement captures Wil’s deep-seated admiration for her mother, a complex figure she is desperately trying to better understand.

I was first drawn to Saving Face because of its premise as a queer rom-com. After my first watch, I was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t the love story I expected. The film’s primary love story is between mother and daughter, who ultimately realize that they just want the best for each other, even if those decisions are frowned upon by everybody else. It is essentially a love letter from Wu to her mother. “I wanted my mother to know that it was never too late to fall in love for the first time,” according to her director’s statement of the film. 

While some critics found the film’s final scenes saccharine and overly simple, Wu was determined to write a happy ending — a narrative that did not default to tragedy or misfortune. And that’s befitting for a mother-daughter story. Why do rom-coms always get happy endings, and not family dramas? With Saving Face, Wu dares to ask: Why not both?

Saving Face is available to rent on Amazon Prime. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.