A Picture of You is a sharp, mischievous family drama from filmmaker J.P. Chan, who wrote, directed, and produced his genre-less feature debut, which opens on June 20th at AMC Loews Village 7 in New York City. While the film’s title screams warm nostalgia, Chan avoids channeling the familiar sentimentality that makes indies with similar themes too cloying, telling a more understated, refined story of a tense sibling rivalry and shared regret and reflection. The film also has a few tricks up its sleeve, which add a welcome punch of surprise and mystery to the mix.

Estranged siblings Kyle (Andrew Pang) and Jen (Jo Mei), following the death of their mother (Jodi Long), travel to their childhood home in rural Pennsylvania to sort through her things and pack them into cardboard boxes. Being in the presence of his fussy, self-absorbed sister is a constant strain for Kyle, whose irritability level is perpetually on high. Neither of them seem to be emotionally equipped to process their mother’s passing, with Jen too directionless and Kyle too lost in denial. The friction between them is non-stop, as they bicker over little things like Jen wasting tape by double-sealing boxes.

The potential for overwrought, syrupy moments of melodrama is endless, but Chan’s writing is more savvy than that, giving his actors room to use their faces and body movements to convey their states of mind as they move through their mother’s former habitat. Pang and Mei, like their director, exercise restraint in their performances, together creating a pressurized ebb-and-flow dynamic as opposed to a brother-sister bitch-fest.

The film is funny, with moments of levity carefully placed throughout. The characters are bursting with attitude, dropping F-bombs and “holy fucking shits” liberally. When supporting characters arrive in the form of Jen’s best friend Mika (Teyonah Parris) and boyfriend Doug (Lucas Dixon), the comic factor is bolstered. Dixon in particular is hilarious in a scene involving Doug asking Kyle for his sister’s hand in marriage at a terribly awkward time. An oddly romantic outdoors weed and make-out rendezvous between Kyle and Mika provides good fun, as it shows a relaxed side of Kyle that rounds out his character.

While going through his mom’s computer, Kyle finds scandalous pictures that rattle he and Jen’s perception of her forever. The revelation also rattles any preconceived notions about the film wandering down a familiar path, adding a measure of mystery to the story as Kyle and Jen investigate the origins of the pictures. The photos are ostensibly dreadful—nightmarish even—but as we learn more, the film becomes richer, more layered and textured. Kyle is forced to accept that life isn’t as cut and dry as he’d like it to be, and Jen learns to ground herself in her pursuit of the truth. The moral and emotional complexity of Kyle and Jen’s inner struggles is the film’s strength.

Instead of the dusty, golden aesthetic typically paired with indie nostalgia films, Chan’s approach is crisp and sleek, showing off the clean, modern lines of the house and capturing the yellow melancholy of the leafy surroundings. When we finally learn the whole truth about the mother, it takes some time to digest; it’s an unconventional twist that caps off the film in a pleasantly unexpected fashion that will stick with you for days.

 A Picture of You trailer

In A Picture of You, a brother and sister (Andrew Pang and Jo Mei) return to their rural childhood home in Pennsylvania to sort through their recently deceased mother’s belongings. They discover shocking photos that change their perception of their mother (Jodi Long) entirely. The siblings process and reckon with the startling discovery in radically different ways, and together they venture down the rocky road toward the truth, clashing the whole way. The film also stars Teyonah Parris and Lucas Dixon.

More refined than your typical domestic drama, A Picture of  You transcends the label of “Asian Film”, portraying its protagonists as siblings, flawed souls, and emotionally textured human beings, a treasure in today’s movie industry, which typecasts Asian Americans rampantly. The film is funny, well-written, relatable, and at times gut-wrenching, and director J.P. Chan exhibits an impressive measure of finesse in his debut feature.

In Part 2 of our interview with Chan, Lucas Dixon weighs in on the film, as with us the two discuss learning that our parents were as confused as us, older folks being freed of life constraints, the film’s visual style, defining the film’s genre, the influence of I Love You Phillip Morris, and more.

Lucas, I asked the rest of the cast this question: Can you remember a time you found a picture of your parents you hadn’t seen before and how it affected you?

Lucas: Of course. Seeing my parents from their young, newlywed days is strange, like they’re complete strangers, but it’s also really sweet. Those are the kind of pictures I’ve seen of my parents.

I have this thing, like a lot of people, where it’s very difficult for me to imagine my parents as anything but responsible adults. They were kids, but I can’t wrap my head around that.

JP: That’s something I’m much more well aware of as I get older. It shatters the idea that you get to a certain point in life and you figure everything out. You just plateau, living your life as an adult. That certainly hasn’t happened for me. That point where I figure it out just always seems further and further down the road. Maybe it’ll never come. By the time my mother was the age I am now, she had been divorced, been through a bankruptcy, been through a foreclosure. She was a single, working class mom with two kids, working as a waitress to stay alive. Then, she found a new home with her new husband and us. She wasn’t even my age, and she’d done all this. She was still trying to figure herself out, also. I think we’re all winging it.

Lucas: My dad is ten years older than my mom, and he was her high school physics teacher. They got married as soon as she turned 18. I’m 28, so imagining myself marrying an 18-year-old at this point in my life is hard.

I don’t want to spoil anything for our readers, but we learn with the main characters that their mom was involved in a relationship that’s pretty progressive as far as American society is concerned. We could have learned any number of things about the mom–what compelled you to write the revelation in this way?

JP: Part of it was that I wanted them to find something about the mother that really turned their world upside-down. The last thing they’d want to learn as they’re grieving for her. There’s also a lot of comic potential involved in that. The other part of it is that I’d heard these kinds of stories from people before, how they would find polaroids of their dad in a book shelf of him with an old girlfriend or something.

Part of me wanted to write another movie about the old folks in the movie, what their life was like before she died. As I get older, I think about how much of the constraints in your life are ones you create for yourself. I was trying to envision a time where, I’m like that old guy in the street who doesn’t give a fuck about being polite in the supermarket line. He’s slightly off, but in some ways he’s uninhibited and free from all these constraints. I was envisioning this world where they had this freedom to live the life that they choose.

The aesthetic of the film doesn’t go for that antiqued, oldie style so many nostalgia indies are painted with. Your film is clean and vibrant, not golden. In the flashbacks of the mom, there’s a dark ring around the image.

JP: The idea behind that came from wanting to portray the flashbacks in a way that was very vivid, like a strong memory, and yet, you don’t know everything that happened around that memory. It’s almost a visual metaphor, how there were things left out from that memory, and the kids find out that there’s a lot they didn’t know about their mom. I think a big inspiration for that visual tool was the old Fiona Apple video for Criminal.

If I were to ask you to put this film in a genre, what would it be?

JP: Ooh…I hate the word “dramedy”. I go back and forth. Is it a drama with funny stuff, or a comedy with dramatic stuff? I think it’s more of a drama with funny stuff.

Lucas: I feel like the draw of the movie, what makes it unique, is its genre, but that genre is hard to define. There are two vastly different chapters in the movie that both feel like their own genres.

JP: I’m cutting the trailer right now, and I’m having a lot of trouble because I have no idea what part of the movie to emphasize.

How about if I put it this way: This film is for lovers of what? What kind of filmgoer would you suggest it to?

JP: It’s a smart, honest movie that doesn’t have a lot of flash to it. It’s a very adult movie, respectful of life and life’s challenges. But also, you have to be playful in life, and life can be funny. There has to be a glimmer of hope that keeps you going. My aspiration for this movie is that, when you’re feeling really terrible, you can kind of curl up with it and feel like you’re not alone.

I freaking love I Love You Phillip Morris. I feel like it’s kind of close to this film. There are so many highs and lows in that movie, with hilarious comedy and serious drama. I love it. It’s full of surprises, and I hope this movie is full of surprises as well.

Lucas: I think the modern day audience likes to know what they’re getting into; I’m going to this movie to cry, I’m going into this movie to laugh. I like art that can give me a very unexpected experience. It might be a very polarizing experience for me, where I’m grieving and then laughing the next moment. That’s the human experience.

In A Picture of You, a brother and sister (Andrew Pang and Jo Mei) return to their rural childhood home in Pennsylvania to sort through their recently deceased mother’s belongings. They discover shocking photos that change their perception of their mother (Jodi Long) entirely. The siblings process and reckon with the startling discovery in radically different ways, and together they venture down the rocky road toward the truth, clashing the whole way. The film also stars Teyonah Parris and Lucas Dixon.

More refined than your typical domestic drama, A Picture of  You transcends the label of “Asian Film”, portraying its protagonists as siblings, flawed souls, and emotionally textured human beings, a treasure in today’s movie industry, which typecasts Asian Americans rampantly. The film is funny, well-written, relatable, and at times gut-wrenching, and director J.P. Chan exhibits an impressive measure of finesse in his debut feature.

We spoke to Chan and his cast after the film’s screening at this year’s CAAMFest, discussing the personal inspirations behind the film, what it’s like to discover old pictures of your parents, CAAMFest, Asian American roles disappearing, a woman thinking the film was shot in Japan (seriously), and more.

For more info, visit apoyfilm.com. Stay tuned for Part 2 of our interview, coming tomorrow.

Let’s start off with the most basic question. What was the inspiration behind the film?

JP: There was a combination of inspirations for the movie. It’s emotionally based on my grieving for my mother when she passed away a few years ago and how it affected my family dynamic, especially with my brother. Also, I realized at that point that I only knew a portion of her. She was so much more than just my mom; she was someone’s wife, someone’s best friend, someone’s co-worker. There was such a fuller picture of her than I realized. Not what happens in my movie, of course, [laughs] but more than I realized.

Can you remember a time when you were rifling through old family stuff and found a picture of your parents that you’d never seen before? How did that feel?

Jodi: I found this picture of my parents sitting on a dock. My mother was spraying the water with her feet. My dad was really into her, and she looked like, “I’m not sure about this.” [laughs] They were in bathing suits in the ’40s.

Jo: My parents immigrated from China, so there’s a big divide in the pictures between when they were young in China and when they immigrated and came to the US. Their younger pictures are black and white. Any time I see pictures of them in black and white, they just look like entirely different people. I think of who they were before me, before moving their lives to the US. They were different people.

How was the screening at CAAMFest last night?

Jo: The challenge of an indie film coming to a small festival is that you’re always worried about how much outreach you can do or how much it’s going to connect with the audience. I was really happy that we filled up the theater and people stayed for the Q&A.

Jodi: I thought it was great. There wasn’t this mass exodus after the screening ended! [laughs] Everyone pretty much stayed. People were laughing and crying.

Did you get the laughs you were looking for, JP?

JP: Oh yeah. This is only our third festival, so not many people have seen the movie, but enough people have seen it for me to feel confident that it works for the audience. I feel like my job now is mainly to get people in the seats and make sure the picture is in focus. The folks at CAAM have been great.

This is a tiny cast, so you had to get the right people to fill those roles, since they’re all important. How did you assemble your actors, and for Jodi and Jo, what was the dynamic like on set?

JP: Jo Mei and I have worked on several shorts before. We knew a bunch of the actors personally. Andrew Pang was someone we knew from the New York Asian American theater scene. He’s done a lot of smaller roles in big movies and TV. I’ve wanted to work with him for a long time, so it was amazing. Jodi came on because people have been saying for years that Jo Mei looks like a young Jodi. She was our first choice for the mother role, so we’re really lucky.

Jo: At first we were worried that she would ignore us! [laughs]

JP: Teyonah was the lead in one of my shorts, before she did Mad Men.

Jo: Teyonah and I went to Julliard together, and Andy and Lucas are Yale grads. I knew of Lucas through my friends at Yale, and he was the perfect type of actor we wanted.

The neighborhood you shot the film in looks gorgeous.

JP: The house is actually owned by a friend of mine and his partner. When they bought the house, they told me that if I ever wanted to shoot a movie there, I could use it. I wrote a script set in his house, and in 2012 showed up at his house with it. We had free access for three weeks.

Jodi: It’s also a really interesting house, architecturally. It’s another character in the movie. The architect designed an upside-down house. It’s really modern. Usually, you walk in and it’s the living room, the kitchen, whatever. In this house, the office is downstairs, then the bedrooms are upstairs, and the kitchen, living room, and dining room are on the top floor, where the best views are. I got to stay in the master bedroom!

JP: Knowing that we had that location nailed down, it allowed us to create the story around it. It really enhanced the story. The clean lines of the house really relate to what the characters are going through, and it’s a nice juxtaposition to the nature outside.

What has your experience been as an Asian American in cinema?

Jodi: JP doesn’t bang the Asian American thing over the head. The characters have this sister-brother relationship, which everybody has. The house is so modern, so indicative of where we’ve come as Asian Americans.

Jo: In the film, we address the fact that we’re Asian, but it’s not the point. We joke about it, because we recognize that we’re in a rural, white town in Pennsylvania in the movie. But we don’t talk about our race over breakfast! We’re human beings. As somebody who’s coming out of school and trying to break into the business, there are circumstances where people are aware that we don’t have to cast Asian actresses as the nail salon worker, or the newscaster, or the waitress, so they give it to somebody else. They’re not expanding those roles, so those little roles are disappearing.

JP: I feel like I would be dishonest if I wrote the film any other way. You could have made the argument, before we hired the cast, that if we hired non-Asian actors, the film would have wider appeal. That may be true. But there’s an inability in the indie film world to process what a film like ours looks like. We don’t think it’s particularly Asian American. I’ve had plenty of white folks come up to us and say, “This isn’t that Asian.” People see Asian faces on a poster and think, “This isn’t for me.” It’s crazy. If I don’t put my work out there the way I want to, then I’m part of the problem. If we white-wash our own movies, we’re fucked!

Jodi: This movie couldn’t exist without all those movies before that focused on being Asian American. It’s an evolutionary process. I mean, I did Flower Drum Song on Broadway, and people still look at that play as the “Asian play.” People were hearing this at the ticket booth. “Do you want to see the Asian play?” This is Rodgers and Hammerstein! Oh my god. Can we ever get beyond this?

JP: In the indie world, I think if people see Asian faces, frankly, they tend to be Asians, and the film is about Asia, or they’re victims of men. I don’t think they know how to process an Asian American, middle-class family drama. At one of our Q&A’s, in Bend, Oregon, a woman that had seen the entire film raised her hand and said, “Was the entire film shot in Japan?” We had a great premiere there, and I wasn’t offended, but to me, that struck me. There’s nothing to indicate that the film takes place anywhere other than America in the present day, but because this woman saw Asian faces, she thought it was in another country.

Jo: In mainstream cinema, they don’t acknowledge the existence of Asian Americans in society. You’re in a hospital, and all the faces are black and white. Even if we were extras, it would at least acknowledge that we exist. When this begins to happen more, women like the one in Oregon wouldn’t think that Asians only exist in Asia.

Jodi: We have to tell our own stories in movies and include faces like ours. Otherwise, we’ll never get into the mainstream. Even if this movie only does an eighth of what X-Men does…

JP: I’d be happy with an eighth! [laughs] I’d be happy with one eight-hundredth!

Jodi: [laughs] You know what I’m saying!