THE GRACE LEE PROJECT
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
So who is Grace Lee really? She is a highly intelligent, quiet, very attractive, unassuming, hard-working and quite intense woman from a Christian family. This description comes from those who know Grace Lee well. Which Grace Lee? All Grace Lees.
In THE GRACE LEE PROJECT, filmmaker Grace Lee explores what it means to have the name Grace Lee, which is one of the most common names of Asian-American women. Growing up in a small town in Missouri, she was the only Asian girl in town, other than her sister, so she had no idea how common her name was. But once she moved to the West Coast, she found Grace Lees wherever she went. And wherever she went, the filmmaker became traumatized by the images of all of those other Grace Lees who seemed to be everything she wasn't.
This hilarious and easily accessible documentary goes in search of the question of whether name is destiny. Since the filmmaker doesn't think she is anything like the mythical Grace Lee, she tries to track down various Grace Lees, using a website to find them and to gather statistics on her namesakes. Statistically, Grace Lee is a heterosexual Californian and a 25-year-old single woman, who has taken 3.5 years of piano training. The name is especially popular among Christian immigrants from Korea and China, but in the 1800s, the name wasn't usually Asian at all. Most Grace Lees back then were of European ancestry.
As she tracks down the various Grace Lees -- including one I am surprised to realize I know -- she finds most of them are pretty close to the description. These people are all to be admired, but the filmmaker wanted to find some Grace Lee rebels. Although she locates some who have broken the mold, none has shattered it as dramatically as an 88-year-old Grace Lee who lives in Detroit. This Chinese-American Grace Lee is a social activist who worked with the Black Panthers and who is still very involved in black community affairs to this day.
Ultimately, the story turns out to be less about a name than a culture. While searching for the average Grace Lee, the filmmaker finds the heart and soul of Asian-Americans. The result is a funny, up-beat film that says a lot without a single preachy or didactic moment. Learning about American subcultures has rarely been this much fun or as informative.
THE GRACE LEE PROJECT runs 0:52.
The film was shown as part of the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival (www.naatanet.org/festival), which ran March 10-20, 2005 in Berkeley, San Francisco and San Jose, California.
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