Original-Cin Review/Interview: Stealing School director Li Dong talks 'Asian Fs,' school's exaggerated importance and absurd tribunals
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B
A lot of themes bounce around in a stately hardwood room in Li Dong’s wry academic-tribunal movie Stealing School.
First there is race. The “defendant,” April Chen (Celine Tsai) is a feisty and talented computer whiz whose relatives have come from China to see her graduate from a prestigious Toronto university.
Said graduation is jeopardized by an accusation of plagiarism in a humanities elective she doesn’t even care about.
This conundrum feeds the axe-grinding of Keith (Jonathan Keltz), a teaching assistant who is inexplicably determined to see April expelled, and drops buzzwords like “saving face” and “you people” when he discovers the family is in town.
Amused accused plagiarist April (Celine Tsai) and her frustrated “student attorney” (Mpho Koaho).
But beyond that, there is rampant self-interest and private agendas. A new faculty administrator (Michelle Monteith) simply wants the whole thing to go away lest she lose her job in a flurry of bad publicity. A student newspaper reporter looks to pounce on a “race trial” scoop. A professor (Matthew Edison) also wants out, llest his history of improper behaviour with female students be exposed. A tribunal member holds a profound career grudge against the professor. And there’s a general sense that the whole thing is an exercise in absurdity.
Dong’s first feature film is a self-assured tale of ambiguity. The easiest thing to do in a movie that touches on race is to paint the victim as a martyr or saint. But in a tribunal room where the air-conditioning has malfunctioned, April never breaks a sweat, even when faced with what seems like convincing evidence. She doesn’t care to be likeable. She has an arrogance and sarcastic approach to her own defence – a defence she insists upon, even though she’s assigned a law student (Mpho Koaho) to represent her, effectively against her will.
For the record, he doesn’t want to be there either, since the tribunal is clearly being improvised, rule-wise, and bears little resemblance to the trial system in which he’s been trained.
It is very possible April is a cheater. But the permutations of personalities and acting mesh so well that, after a while, her guilt or innocence seem almost irrelevant.
Dong understands leaving the audience wanting, and his debut is a sure handed, well produced and sharply shot little drama that drills deeply and believably into often crass human behavior.
Li Dong
Stealing School. Written and directed by Li Dong. Starring Celine Tsai, Jonathan Keltz and Michelle Monteith. Premieres June 19 on VOD with a live Q & A with cast members Celine Tsai and Jonathan Keltz and filmmaker Li Dong. Available on Apple TV and iTunes on June 23.
Interview with Li Dong
First time director Li Dong was inspired to make his debut film about an academic tribunal when he was a law student at Dalhousie University, studying quasi-judicial proceedings.
He admits the fact that he’s now a filmmaker and not a lawyer means he shares one thing with his protagonist April Chen. They both disappointed their parents.
He laughs when I mention the concept of an “Asian F” – which is understood to be anything less than an A. “I was raised to believe school was the most important thing. There was a direct correlation between how well you did at school and how successful you’d be as a human being,” says Dong, who came to Canada from China at age 5.
“During my University years, I found out that was a false belief. I was very disturbed by that discovery and tried to put it in the movie as much as possible - the fact that school and life success and jobs had very little correlation, which is not something I, as an Asian immigrant, was ever raised to believe.”
April has no reason to care about accusations of plagiarism, since she already has a Silicon Valley job lined up, whether she graduates or not. Her ambivalence enrages the teaching assistant who believes he caught her red-handed.
Her real crime, I suggest to Dong, is that she didn’t apologize. “I don’t think she gets called into that tribunal if she was not Asian,” Dong says. “And It’s a real thing for people in positions of power to demand apologies. They just want to hear an apology to remind them they’re in positions of power.
“And in that scene, she would not give it to him.”
What he discovered in his study at Dalhousie, Dong says, was ripe for satire. “During my time there, I heard about these tribunals. They were kind of a dirty secret in academic circles. I just think it’s a funny scenario where a bunch of smart people are trying to fulfil roles they’re not qualified to be in.
“So, for example, in this movie there are people trying to be prosecutors and executioners and judges - basically roles they’ve seen on Law & Order, and are trying to recreate their own courtroom.
“It is satire. And it came straight from the research.”
A feature that takes place almost entirely in a single room appealed to Dong, who used as inspiration Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, the 2014 movie by Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz about an Israeli woman pleading in a religious court to be granted a divorce.
“I was so impressed with that movie, because out of one simple story they could wring so much comedy and drama and social commentary, and a thriller mystery element.
“I thought, if I was going to do a first feature, it should be something like this - a very simple scenario where I would be able to comment on things I cared about.”