There’s a similar moment near the end of Crazy Rich Asians, the movie based on Kevin Kwan’s satirical novel that’s exuberantly storming the box office and furthering an ongoing conversation about representation in Hollywood. That visual, the unwavering love the camera gave Shen and Tobin, was significant, I knew. As the scene moved on, introducing viewers to the strange double-world of Justin Lin’s film, in which the cutthroat domain of teenage suburbia takes on the tenor of a mobster story in bitingly dark ways, my mind lingered on that light, on those faces. Watching the movie in a theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2003, I remember noticing the way the light caught their cheeks and hairlines and noses-the faces of young Asian American actors-with what felt like a radical sort of affection. Ben, played by Parry Shen, has soft, boyish features Virgil, played by Jason Tobin, is all angles. In the opening scene of Better Luck Tomorrow, the camera pans over the faces of two teens as they lie baking in the sun, in some backyard.
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