Double Happiness

Vancouver filmmaker Mina Shum made a significant splash with her debut feature Double Happiness, one of the most talked-about Canadian films of the 1990s. Future Grey’s Anatomy star Sandra Oh, here still an up-and-comer, has the lead in Shum’s seriocomic, semi-autobiographical tale of a young Chinese-Canadian woman torn between her own wants and needs and those of her more traditional parents. Oh plays 22-year-old Jade, an aspiring actress still living at home. When her family decides Jade is old enough to date, they set her up with Andrew, a handsome Chinese-Canadian lawyer. Afraid of being disowned by her dad, Jade agrees to the arrangement, especially if it means her family may leave her alone to pursue her acting. But romantic complications arise when Jade meets Mark (Callum Keith Rennie, in a very early role), a non-Asian university student. The film won Genies for Oh’s performance and Alison Grace’s editing. “There are no heroes or villains in this film . . . Double Happiness is evidence of Shum’s talent for finding humour in the details of a family’s daily struggles and her skill at gently uncovering the inherent ambiguities and contradictions of life in a multicultural landscape” (Canadian Film Encyclopedia). Colour, 35mm, in English and Cantonese with English subtitles. 90 mins.