MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘DIM SUM’ LOOKS AT CHINESE-AMERICANS

Director Wayne Wang looks at the Chinese of San Francisco in “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart� in almost exactly the same way Bill Forsyth looks at his fellow Scots in “Comfort and Joy.� Dead on, dead-pan, with the deepest affection and only the smallest hint of drollery.

Neither director explains much; each takes his own time (which, in the case of Wang, can be rather measured), and quiet is the order of the day. Yet the emotion that “Dim Sum� taps is profound. Its pull is both distinctly Chinese and utterly universal: the cat’s cradle of obligation/guilt/duty of a concerned child for his or her parent. (The film opens at the new Goldwyn Pavilion today.)

The principals of this San Francisco-based chamber film are the cheerfully assimilated Geraldine Tam (Laureen Chew) and her resolutely un -assimilated mother, Mrs. Tam (Kim Chew), who still answers her daughter’s comments in Cantonese, even after 40 years in America. Victor Wong (“Chan Is Missing,� “Year of the Dragon�) plays Uncle Tam, the family’s “other father,� a position he has held since his brother’s death 15 years ago. (The Chews are real-life mother and daughter.)

Mrs. Tam, who has been given a cutoff date by a Cantonese fortuneteller (she mustn’t expect to live much beyond 62), is approaching that age. Tidily, she plans a last trip back to China to pay her final respects and portions out the family treasures. “This year she’s even taken Polaroids of them,� Geraldine sighs to her uncle.

It’s both an ongoing threat and a real worry, to Geraldine and to her friends, many of whose parents are in a faraway “old country.�

Wang builds his portrait from a mosaic of scenes: Mrs. Tam and her mah-jongg cronies, followed by Geraldine and her “m.j.� buddies (a precursor of 30 years to come); the predictable dither of family celebrations, which Mrs. Tam describes succinctly to her back-fence neighbor: “Everybody ate and everybody left�; Geraldine with her boyfriend of longstanding, Richard (John Nishio), a doctor in Los Angeles, and a devastatingly funny crack about Chinese men by Geraldine’s lovely friend Julia (Cora Miao.)

Nothing startling occurs, but you may discover that the calm celebration of the everydayness of their lives is seductive. Wang (working with a real budget this time and a fine photographer, Michael Chin) punctuates his scenes with silent still lifes within Mrs. Tam’s immaculate house, or glances with sweet tellingness at shoes all in a row in the downstairs hall--orthopedic shoes next to plastic “jellies.� It’s a rather conscious quote from Ozu, who’s also referred to in Terrel Seltzer’s screenplay, but it doesn’t lose Wang’s own steadfast tone.

Deaths, decisions and a coming-to-terms are all part of “Dim Sum,� but, most of all, the solidity and enduring nature of these characters are revealed. Poignantly. Quietly. With the greatest tenderness.