Golden Delicious: A Generous, But Pat Asian-Canadian Coming-Out Drama

By Liam Lacey

Rating: C-plus

 A Vancouver-set teenaged coming-out drama, Golden Delicious centers on a Chinese-Canadian high school senior named Jake (Cardi Wong), who is under a lot of pressure, of which college applications are only a small part.

His girlfriend, Valerie (Parmiss Sehat) is insistent about having sex with him. But Jake wants to wait until the moment is “special.” 

Jake (Cardi Wong) gets the '“play sports, be a man,” pep talk from his dad (Ryan May) in Golden Delicious.

As well, Jake’s former jock dad, George (Ryan Mah) is desperate to have Jake make the high school’s basketball team, so much so that he mashes his son’s hand when they’re practicing driving to the hoop in the alley behind their East Vancouver house. 

In truth, Jake’s happy in the friend zone with Valerie, and would rather be the team’s photographer and social media manager than its point guard. Phone-framed social media posts are employed throughout the film, including some depicting critical moments where Jake’s romantic misadventures go embarrassingly public.

One evening, while training his camera lens out his bedroom window, Jake notices an athletic new dude has moved in across the alley. The boy, Alecks (Chris Carson) is also a high school senior and basketball player, proudly gay and ready to jump in anyone’s face if they don’t like it.

Soon, the new neighbour teaches Jake how to hit the net by shooting with his subdominant hand, a skill that indicates the future direction of his life.

Golden Delicious, which is directed by Jason Karman and written by Gorrman Lee, opens this week after a long international festival run. It is both a coming-out story, and one about the intergenerational stresses of an immigrant family. As Jake’s older sister, Janet (Claudia Kai), tells her parents in the script’s on-the-nose dialogue: “You can’t see past your own failed dreams to let us find ours.”

The parents Andrea (Leeah Wong) and dad, George run a family restaurant which gives the film its title. Neither parent likes restaurant work, and the disintegration of their marriage is one of the film’s subplots, echoing Jake’s struggles with desires and denial.

Though the parents have no apparent issues about Jake’s sexuality, both are critical of daughter Janet’s choice to go to cooking school, apparently inspired by a photograph of her grandmother and a bowl of noodles. 

Acted with sincerity and with a generous perspective towards its characters (with the exception of one sneering homophobic basketball bully), Golden Delicious aims to please to a fault. Running at a casually paced two hours, with lots of expository dialogue and an emphatic emotional score that is more exhausting than cathartic, the film has a TV serial sensibility, with the melodramatic peak followed by an easy resolution, hugs, forgiveness and less heartache than seems credible.

Golden Delicious. Directed by Jason Karman, written by Gorrman Lee. Starring: Cardi Wong, Parmiss Sehat, Chris Carson, Claudia Kai, Ryan May and Leah Wong. Golden Delicious opens in theatres on Friday, Sept. 15.