Sometimes the best way to get an audience to consider something, to battle with the way they perceive or process something, is to give it to them wrapped in something else. In the parlance of the 2024 action rom-com The Fall Guy, sometimes a message requires being wrapped in “sexy bacon” in order for the audience to open themselves to the possibility of introspection. For filmmaking partners Van Tran Nguyen (Erie County Smile) and Alex Derwick (Erie County Smile) — and newlyweds (mazel tov!) — this translates into the quirky satire The Motherload, their first feature film that just had its world premiere at Hawaii International Film Festival 2024 and now is screening during New Orleans Film Festival 2024. A film not to be missed for its hilarious use of lo-fi props and minimal casting (Nguyen and her mother Sang “Sandy” Tran play all the roles), and the serious bite it has as it lays out the maligned perception of Vietnam and its people through consumed U.S. media. Impressively, even more than that, it’s a lovely family story as mother and daughter portray fictional versions of themselves (and others), showing themselves to be a wholesome duo that only enhances the emotional power of the narrative.
L-R: Sang “Sandy” Tran as Kim Le and Van Tran Nguyen as Jessica Le in THE MOTHERLOAD. Photo courtesy of Hawaii International Film Festival.
Mother-daughter Kim and Jessica Le (Tran and Nguyen, respectively) make the best they can out of a difficult situation since the divorce. The duo share a bed in a small living space within a nail salon, use a local gym for exercise and bathing, and each hold down separate jobs to help get by: Kim as a housecleaner and Jessica as a translator for a local film criticism show. What starts as a day like any other ends up having profound repercussions for the duo as outside forces converge in a way that requires them to confront the complex relationship they have with America.
In a recent episode of Fox & Friends, Former President Trump stated that he would withhold funding from public schools if said schools tried to teach history that he disagreed with, the cited examples being “cities built on the backs of slaves” and “stolen land.” The issue is that this isn’t something that should be debated as they are truths. The United States has a repeated history, with laws on the books to back this up, of bringing in immigrants (by force or promises of citizenship) to do jobs and then betraying them. It happened with the expansion West out of the colonies that served as another piece of kindling toward revolution from England; it happened with the Indigenous peoples who were forcibly removed from their land to make way for U.S. expansion; it happened with the African peoples kidnapped and shipped to the U.S. to work the fields and serve in homes against their will; and it happened with the Asian immigrants brought in to help finish the railroad out West, only for laws to be put in place banning them from achieving citizenship. Each time, the entertainment that followed created a narrative that positioned Americans as heroes and those they engage with (either as foreigners in the U.S. or as foreigners in a foreign land) as grateful for their arrival *or* to be made the villain that will continuously propagate harmful stereotypes. There’s a reason that bad guys in entertainment often correlate to a perceived enemy, whether it’s “Indians” to cowboys, Russians during the Cold War (and after), China for a time, and much of the Middle East in a post-9/11 world. Heck, even the cinematography used in most productions that take place in the Middle East are given a strange yellowish-orange tinge to indicate an otherworldly, slightly burnt look that shots of the United States or the United Kingdom in the same film don’t have. Once you notice the precise slant that filmmakers utilize in their stories and the homogony that exists in the visual language across filmmakers, it’s difficult not to sense that the entertainment we ingest is fueling the racial tensions and reinforcing regular old stereotypes and grievances to maintain division. This is where the bite of Nguyen and Derwick’s script comes in as it satirizes the movie-making process and the failure by many to critically explore the films they consume.
In order to preserve some of the jokes, we’re going to do a little dancing around as to how Nguyen and Derwick execute the satire. So, what does that leave to analyze clearly? Let’s focus on the duality of the central characters and their respective jobs. Kim is a house cleaner and Jessica a translator. Both possess skills that others lack and speak to the generational experience of a first- and second-generation immigrant. The two characters speak a mixture of English and Vietnamese, often with one character speaking one language while the other responds in another. Based on character presentation, Jessica grew up in a dual-language home and has been given a certain level of schooling to be able to be hired as a translator for a TV broadcast program in New York focused on film. Kim is not uneducated either nor is she lazy, a stigma attached to many immigrants for political reasons to detract from the well-documented evidence of the hard-working nature of immigrants, their drive a central component for much of the expansion of the United States throughout history. Nguyen and Derwick crafted characters that feel whole despite the limited shared screentime as a result of their spending the bulk of the first hour at work, simply because of what we’re shown as they work. Kim is diligently straightening the home, while Jessica focuses on the translations the show requires. Nguyen and Derwick keep the two tethered through the television program as Kim watches it while working, emblematic of two things: a curious mind and a desire to support her daughter’s work. Through Jessica, we get the delightful characters of Professor Sang (Tran) and “Doc” Gordon (Nguyen), two Siskel-and-Ebert types, who are recording a special Vietnam-centric episode in which they bring up, show clips from, and explore various films like Rambo: First Blood (1982), Apocalypse Now (1979), and Good Morning, Vietnam (1987). Through this workplace experience, Nguyen and Derwick unload on American audiences who’ve, for too long, either failed to examine the films initially or given them any new thought in the modern era. Each of them are worthy of praise, aspects which Gordon is quick to champion, but are also worthy of reexamination, which Sang is even faster to explain. Sure, it’s hilarious to see Nguyen and Tran reenact each of the film clips using cardboard and minimal details, an element which pushes the audience to use their imagination and better connect with the concepts being explored (the metaphorical teeth drawing blood as the scenework continues). This is the aforementioned “sexy bacon,” as Tran and Nguyen trade places and genders from one clip to another, or, even more hilariously, when Nguyen plays two people whom have a child together. But through the laughter, the words of Sang ring out, reminding us that the words of these beloved films and the directors behind them are not of Vietnamese decent and do not have the specific perspective of the people, so whether the intention is meant well or not, there’s always a missed opportunity or failed element of authentic representation that does little more than put down the Vietnamese people and uplift the American perspective.
Quick side note: there’s a reference to a project featuring Jesse Plemons (Game Night; Kinds of Kindness), Veronica Ngo (Furie; The Creator; Star Wars: The Last Jedi), and Ke Huy Quang (The Goonies; Everything Everywhere All at Once; Loki), and, frankly, it may have been pulled from the ether, but I would buy a ticket for that collaboration. In context, it’s hilarious and speaks to a number of relevant issues within the American-based filmmaking industry, but as a fan of all three actors, I would like to see it happen.
Van Tran Nguyen in THE MOTHERLOAD. Photo courtesy of New Orleans Film Festival.
In all fairness to The Motherload, there are elements of which I am not fully equipped to explore, and not just because I, too, can recite lines from Good Morning, Vietnam as (1) I grew up the son of a historian and (2) a fan of Robin Williams, but because I’m also a by-product of the American education system, regardless of whether I spent 12 years at a college prep institution, earned a Bachelor’s and a Master’s, and explore film on a near-daily basis. As an adult in my 40s, I spend more time unlearning and reexploring, so when Tran as Sang points out the historical discrepancies within a film built out of the year it was released vs. the year it’s set, I don’t turn into Gordon lamenting the lack of “fun” being had. Films can be merely entertainment, or, at the very least, seen that way. But filmmakers are artists whose canvas is the visual language of cinema, so their stories are seeking to do something specific. A critic’s job, nay, a cinema historian’s job is to acknowledge what it is the filmmakers seek to do, how well do they do it, and whether there are any anachronisms intentional or accidental and what do they represent? Nguyen and Derwick’s film is full of anachronisms, but each of them serve a specific purpose to convey the difficulty and, often, disinterest in telling accurate and compelling stories over rehashing stereotypes and uplifting the old guard. Their film is full of imagination, passion, and heart that work in sharp synchronicity to create an unforgettable experience that’ll have you clamoring for the next project these two incisive minds create.
Screening during New Orleans Film Festival 2024.
Available on VOD via Apple TV June 16th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official New Orleans Film Festival 2024 The Motherload webpage.
Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
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