Blue Bayou | Little White Lies

Blue Bay­ou

02 Dec 2021 / Released: 03 Dec 2021

Words by Hannah Strong

Directed by Justin Chon

Starring Alicia Vikander, Justin Chon, and Mark O’Brien

Two people embracing intimately in a low-lit setting with blurred lights in the background.
Two people embracing intimately in a low-lit setting with blurred lights in the background.
3

Anticipation.

Chon is a promising but slightly inconsistent talent.

2

Enjoyment.

Ambitious but inelegantly executed.

2

In Retrospect.

A documentary would have better served the real-life adoptees who face this issue.

Justin Chon’s melo­dra­mat­ic tale of immi­gra­tion and injus­tice in present-day Amer­i­ca is under­mined by a clichéd script.

There’s no doubt that the sub­ject mat­ter at the heart of Justin Chon’s Blue Bay­ou is com­pelling and pre­scient – it focus­es on the injus­tice of for­eign-born adoptees in the Unit­ed States being deport­ed due to a legal loop­hole as a result of the Child Cit­i­zen­ship Act of 2000.

Despite hav­ing spent the major­i­ty of their lives in Amer­i­ca with no fam­i­ly or life in their native coun­try (and poten­tial­ly hav­ing endured abuse at the hands of their adop­tive fam­i­lies) these peo­ple are forced to endure lengthy and expen­sive legal bat­tles, else accept deportation.

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For Anto­nio LeBlanc (played by Chon) this means leav­ing behind his preg­nant wife Kathy (Ali­cia Vikan­der), adop­tive daugh­ter Jessie (Syd­ney Kowalske) and his job as a tat­too artist, after the immi­gra­tion depart­ment rule he must leave Amer­i­ca for his native South Korea – a coun­try Anto­nio has no rela­tion­ship with.

Chon gives a strong per­for­mance as Anto­nio, and the sup­port­ing play­ers are equal­ly charm­ing, but the script is weak and often clichéd, fea­tur­ing a tan­gle of sub­plots which don’t quite mesh. Advo­ca­cy group Adoptees for Jus­tice claim Blue Bay­ou utilis­es real-life sto­ries with­out con­sent and have called for an apol­o­gy from the direc­tor who’s heart appears to be in the right place by high­light­ing this dev­as­tat­ing issue of dis­placed adoptees.

But his exe­cu­tion is heavy-hand­ed, with the end­ing steer­ing into a mawk­ish spec­ta­cle which under­cuts the seri­ous­ness of the top­ic at hand.

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