Foraging for Family in Bitterroot
Tribeca Film Festival coverage - Drama
Familial relationships are some of our most formative relationships while also being some of the most complex. Our families give us the tools necessary to navigate our lives apart from them, but sometimes those tools can feel almost like weapons, and sometimes they can feel like tethers, binding us to systems that we are trying to escape. Vera Brunner-Sung digs into these themes in her feature film Bitterroot, which just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Lue (Wa Yang) is a recently divorced man living with his mother (Qu Kue) in rural Montana. Though he is a mere six months from his divorce, his mother is urging him to find a new wife. When Lue is unwilling to follow her advice, she goes to a shaman, trying to force his hand. He also deals with his pushy sister, May (Gia Vang). To escape, he heads to the forests, ravaged by the August wildfires, to forage for morels. But he discovers that there is no way to escape your past or your family and that confronting the difficult parts of your life is something most will have to do at one point or another.
Bitterroot is a quiet, lovely film. The family depicted in this film is Hmong, and those cultural elements certainly play a part in the development of the characters. Still, the issues surrounding the family are universal, allowing this movie to be accessible to a wide audience while telling a nuanced story.
The performances are all quite lovely, but I particularly enjoyed Yang’s performance as Lue. There is little dialogue for his character, but he gives a touching and intimate performance nevertheless. His struggles feel honest, and we feel invited to know him better, even as he holds so many at arm’s length.
Foraging is one of the prominent themes in the movie, and we see that shown in Lue’s life. There is no exposition dump where we learn about the story of his divorce, instead, we are given morsels as we follow along with the film’s narrative. This film demands your attention, but that attention is rewarded by allowing us to know these characters more intimately.Â
Enjoy my interview with Bitterroot writer/director Vera Brunner-Sung and actors Wa Yang and Gia Vang.