It is unexpected to see vintage romcom values upheld in an indie movie populated almost exclusively by Filipino-Americans. Tony award-winning producer Jhett Tolentino at least has a good high-concept hook for his feature directorial debut: a beleaguered divorcee tries to get out of paying alimony to his ex-wife by making a fake dating profile to bag her a new partner. Sadly, this tonally shaky and borderline-sociopathic outing doesn’t have the class or skill to be part of the much-needed renaissance for the genre.
Asian Persuasion takes place on the great New York dating grounds beloved of many a romcom: feckless single dad Mickey (Dante Basco, who played the leader of the Lost Boys in Steven Spielberg’s Hook) is struggling to elevate his Queens coffee shop, Da Fili Beans, to hipster notoriety. Ponying up payments to his fashion designer ex Avery (KC Concepcion) as they co-parent their daughter isn’t helping. So during a night on the lash with his wingman Caspian (Kevin Kreider), they cook up a scheme to make her someone else’s problem; preppy financial analyst Lee-Kwan (Paolo Montalban) is the man they target as their best hope.
Tolentino’s attempts to court the zeitgeist are often painful, including Caspian premiering his latest TikTok dance at the coffee shop, and self-conscious dialogue apparently drawn from below-the-line on Instagram (“Can I unsubscribe from that memory?”). This extends to a strain of crassness (“We’re practically drowning in a tsunami of poon”) that makes for a rough transition to true romance, when Mickey uses his insider knowledge to knock Lee-Kwan into shape, Cyrano-style, as the ultimate seducer.
So it’s not a shock when Asian Persuasion lacks the finesse required to pull off the U-turn when Mickey decides he wants Avery back. His ham-fisted sushi-bar sabotage scheme is completely unconvincing, leaving the already hard-pedalling actors looking daft. The cursory flashbacks to the couple’s disintegrating marriage first time round don’t add enough depth to make him seem much more than manipulative, or her more than an inexplicable dupe. Alternately gullible or status-obsessed, its female characters feel retrograde – even featuring a French character actually wearing a beret. The film doesn’t exactly cover itself in glory, a shame considering Tolentino’s evident zeal for promoting Asian representation.