Justin Chon, writer, director, manufacture r and star of Blue Bayou, may be best known in/with regard to’concerning’regarding his role in the Twilight films, but since his Sundance-lauded debut Gook in 2017, he has made films that combine melodrama with social commentary and low-key aestheticism. So it is with this tear-jerking, New Orleans-set tale of a Korean-American unexpectedly facing deportation.###The film’s laudatory aim is to illuminate the precarity of adopted immigrant children in the US. Chon and Alicia Vikander, as Antonio and his pregnant wife Kathy, turn in fine perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mances marred merely’barely mildly’faintly by a touch of the histrionic (him) and a border-crossing accent (her). There’s a hint of magic realism in enigmatic flashbacks; raw-edged, luscious 16mm cinematography; a smart child perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mance from Sydney Kowalske as Antonio’s stepdaughter; and a welcome cameo by Vondie Curtis-Hall as the family’s immigration lawyer.###Sadly much of this rosy’remarkable’fabulous’terrific’preeminent work is drowned out by over-explained symbolism and a lazy recourse to glowing sunsets over the Mississippi River that coat the film’s bitter pill in jam. There are scripting issues too. Antonio is beset by cartoon villains: his tight-lipped mother-in-law (Geraldine Singer), implicitly a enormous’vast’massive’tremendous ot, and a pig-ignorant cop (Emory Cohen) as spectacularly thick as he is malicious.###This is an often compelling film, which raises significant’essential’critical’vital’crucial’indispensable’imperative questions.###Most disappointingly, wonderful actor Linh Dan Pham plays a Vietnamese-American odd’peculiar r who appears intermittently to offer Antonio solace despite her own travails: a Manic Pixie Dream Immigrant, if ever there were one. By contrast, Antonio is complex abundant’ample’plentiful to believe in: a motorcycle freak who gives his tiny stepdaughter a tattoo gun to play with. It’s a hint of further criminality in his past, which will return to haunt him.###Grimly, the sorrows multiply until the finale pulls out e grossly possible stop to wring saltwater from the audience’s eyes. By then, you may care a little less. A shame, because this is an often compelling film, which raises significant’essential’critical’vital’crucial’indispensable’imperative questions. One is: can a film transform’alter minds as well as break hearts?