Film Forum

U.S., 1982
Directed by Wayne Wang
With Wood Moy, Marc Hayashi, Laureen Chew, Peter Wang
Approx. 80 mins. DCP.

San Francisco cab drivers Wood Moy and Marc Hayashi search the streets of Chinatown and question local characters in search of the mysterious eponymous character who ran off with their money, in Neo-Noir comedy made on a budget of $22,000 by director/co-writer Wang — the first major American independent by a Chinese American.

Reviews

“Bravely open-ended, Wang’s CHAN accomplished something rare: It celebrated and reveled in the profound shapelessness of identity. Identity is something communities imagine together, a reality encoded in the all-together-now production of the film itself. Twenty years later, Wang’s debut feature is still subtler and more provocative than most films about racial or ethnic conundrums; it certainly feels more truthful in its ambiguity.”
– Hua Hsu, Slate

“A MATCHLESS DELIGHT.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“STILL BRAZENLY INVENTIVE AND BRACINGLY FRESH. Not just a groundbreaking film, but also a witty, intelligent, mischievous attempt to mix identity politics (of an inquisitive, skeptical sort), social documentary, and genre parody.”
– Jonathan Romney, Film Comment

 “Funny and fast moving... crackles with the excitement of a new director tackling a new, exciting subject. Wang sees his Chinese subjects with an irony and intelligence that gives us far more than a puncturing of old stereotypes.”
– Sean French, Sight & Sound

“A raunchy, sprawling and completely unpredictable panorama of the Chinese-American experience... It is sometimes wildly comic, sometimes melancholy, sometimes suspenseful and often strangely touching.”
– Time Out

"A masterpiece of eighties independent film, and it remains one of the most profound meditations on immigrant identity ever made.”
– Hua Hsu, The New Yorker