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The Motel (film)
Encyclopedia
The Motel is the debut feature from director Michael Kang
. The film won the Humanitas Prize
in the Sundance Film Festival
category, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature.
It is based on the novel Waylaid by Ed Lin.
. Recurring themes include painful encounters with a bully named Roy and Ernest's persistent feelings of being misunderstood by his family. Ernest also blindly explores his incipient sexuality, which includes nursing a crush on Christine, an older girl who works at a Chinese restaurant nearby. Ernest's life changes after he meets the newest guest at the motel: a self-destructive yet charming Korean-American man named Sam Kim (Sung Kang
), who is caught in a downward spiral after estrangement from his wife.
Michael Kang (director)
Michael Kang is an American film director and screen writer. He is Korean American and based in Los Angeles....
. The film won the Humanitas Prize
Humanitas Prize
The Humanitas Prize is an award for film and television writing intended to promote human dignity, meaning, and freedom. It began in 1974 with Father Ellwood "Bud" Kieser — also the founder of Paulist Productions — but is generally not seen as specifically directed toward religious...
in the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
category, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature.
It is based on the novel Waylaid by Ed Lin.
Plot
Thirteen-year-old Ernest Chin's life is devoted to working at his family's hourly-rate motel, where a steady stream of prostitutes, johns, and various other shady characters come and go. Abandoned by his father, he lives with his mother, grandfather, and younger sister Katie. The film is a loosely assembled series of vignettes examining the difficulty of adolescenceAdolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
. Recurring themes include painful encounters with a bully named Roy and Ernest's persistent feelings of being misunderstood by his family. Ernest also blindly explores his incipient sexuality, which includes nursing a crush on Christine, an older girl who works at a Chinese restaurant nearby. Ernest's life changes after he meets the newest guest at the motel: a self-destructive yet charming Korean-American man named Sam Kim (Sung Kang
Sung Kang
Sung Kang is an American actor, known for his role as Han Seoul-Oh in the films Better Luck Tomorrow, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious, and Fast Five....
), who is caught in a downward spiral after estrangement from his wife.