We Are Living Things: UFO Drama a Metaphor (Maybe?) for Aliens in America’s Backyard

By John Kirk

Rating: C+

Community is a precious thing, and it’s important to be reminded of that when intense moments occur.

In director Antonio Tibaldi’s new drama, two illegal immigrants with a common belief in UFO phenomenon who are living on the fringes of society find each other, despite their different cultural backgrounds.

Mexican Solomon (Jorge Antonio Guerrero) believes his mother was abducted by aliens. From scraps of technology, he scavenges in his job as a handyman in an apartment complex and builds himself a high gain antenna dish to intercept alien communications to help find her.

Chuyao (Xingchen Lyu), a Chinese nail salon worker — who is also pimped out by her boyfriend for evening liaisons with business partners — believes she was abducted by aliens. By some strange stroke of chance, Solomon and Chuyao find each other, and despite their differences, they connect.

That’s the big takeaway from this film. The story plods slowly as Chuyao and Solomon discover what they have in common. In the first part of the film, we see their lifestyles apart from each other and get a better sense of who they are.

It is Solomon who initiates contact and while Chuyao is hesitant at first, she slowly realizes that her life is more secure and safe with Solomon than with her boyfriend, Tiger (Zao Wang). She opts for a life on the road with Solomon in search of his mother.

We Are Living Things provides the audience with a thoughtful and stark view of what it’s like to live as an undocumented illegal in the United States. The difficulty in simply trying to make a living, the perpetual fear of being discovered by law enforcement and even the struggle of maintaining relationships with other people.

But throughout this film, it’s actually a struggle for the audience to make sense of the relationship between Solomon and Chuyao, not to mention the plot. There is challenge in discerning what Solomon’s motives are.

Is he truly interested in learning more about Chuyao’s own interest in UFO’s or is it strictly a romantic interest? Chuyao initially fears Solomon but when he eventually murders her boyfriend, she seems puzzlingly reassured and safe with him, even when he steals a truck to drive to Arizona to the site of his mother’s abduction.

There is even a strange scene when Chuyao is escorting a business associate of Tiger’s and is drugged unconscious, bound, and subjected to a twisted type of fetishism. It boggles the mind to even guess at the point of the scene in the first place.

In terms of the ambiguity of the plot, the notion of alien abduction is thinly mentioned. While we gain the definite sense that this is one of Solomon’s interests from the beginning with the technology he has accumulated, it is quickly abandoned when the two must flee Solomon’s makeshift workshop and apartment.

We don’t learn about Chuyao’s interest in UFO phenomenon until Solomon notices a magnetic stone in her apartment, which is supposed to provide him with the realization of her shared belief. It is only when he states to her that he knows she believes in them too when this becomes known.

There is a lot of subtlety in this film, but too much of the plot is left to ambiguity or weak implication. The UFO theme is almost completely sublimated in favour of the relationship between the two fringe dwellers.

We learn nothing about UFOs, and the only result of their search is to eventually make it to an empty part of the Arizona desert and set up camp. While nothing happens, we are left with an asserted image of their connection to each other as they stand embraced and looking up into the sky.

That’s the one clear thing in this film. Despite diverse backgrounds, different cultures and languages, we all connect in some way or another. Solomon and Chuyao may not be successful in their quest for alien abductors, but they have each other.

That’s a value we all need more of in this world.

We Are Living Things. Directed by Antonio Tibaldi. Starring Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Xingcheng Lyu, Zao Wang, O-Lan Jones, and Paul Cooper. Opens August 12.