LIKE A DREAM: Asian American Masculinity and Transnational Chinese Cinema

Abstract

Hong Kong‐Australia filmmaker Clara Law’s LIKE A DREAM (2009) features Asian American star Daniel Wu as a New York‐based computer designer who becomes obsessed with a Mainland Chinese woman he knows only from his dreams. The film moves between China and America providing a transnational backdrop to this story highlighting Asian American masculinity, Chinese identity, urban angst, and the rapidly changing landscape/dreamscape of the People’s Republic. Within a postmodern aesthetic, it weaves elements from VERTIGO, THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE, LA JETEE, and other classics about obsession, delusions, and dual identities in order to explore the politics of identity between the United States and China. Known for her interest in the Chinese diaspora and melodramas about migration, Clara Law brings her distinctive fascination with subjectivity, the surreal, and the grotesque to this interrogation of American masculinity and Chinese feminine desire. Examining this feature alongside its accompanying short RED EARTH, this presentation analyzes the way in which global film aesthetics, postmodernity, and masculinity combine to comment on contemporary tensions between America and China seen through the lens of the screen romance.