In the final installment of an indie trilogy (of sorts), we finally catch up with Goh Nakamura, the folk-pop musician who played a version of himself in two films at the beginning of last decade. In 2011’s Surrogate Valentine, Goh had secured a job on a movie production, which put him in the vicinity of old friends and a kind-of-lover. In 2012’s Daylight Savings, he had found some success on the road and in a commercial for depression medication, while juggling a trio of romantic options. Both films were cowritten by Nakamura, and both were mostly excuses for him to stage bizarre misadventures that were equal parts awkward and twee. That’s what makes I Will Make You Mine such a refreshing change of direction for this series, even though it makes that turn as the series is ending.
There are several reasons for this. The central one is that this is the writing and directing debut of Lynn Chen, who had not performed either function for the previous movies but did appear in a supporting role as Rachel, who had known Goh since their high school days. They were prom dates, and while the romantic tension was thick between them for years, several more years of absence just made it that much stronger when they were reunited in the first film. She returned in the second, seemingly out of narrative obligation, even as Nakamura and his co-screenwriters manufactured reasons to isolate Goh from the women in his life. Here, Chen focuses on those women almost exclusively, pushing Goh into a supporting role in what was originally his own story.
That seems fitting, since even those movies acknowledged that Goh was the least interesting character. There was even an overexertion in their attempts to include other, quirkier characters (the washed-up actor in the first one, his live-wire cousin in the second) to enliven the proceedings. The women were always pushed to the background, entirely defined by how they were entangled with Goh. By recontextualizing those relationships to focus on these three women, Chen subverts our expectations with surprising success. Some contrivances remain, and the material surrounding each woman’s own romantic troubles is blatantly melodramatic. There is a notable uptick in honesty and a shift in tone, though. No longer are these the subjects of awkward indie comedies. This is an ensemble-driven drama.
There is Rachel, who is now in a sexless marriage with Josh (Mike Faiola). They’re in couples therapy after his series of infidelities with an assistant, and Rachel has gone back to pining for Goh. There is Erika (Ayako Fujitani), the fan-turned-protégé-turned-lover, whom Goh has married and with whom he has fathered a daughter named Sachiko (Ayami Riley Tomine). She has returned to L.A. from their quiet life in Wisconsin to bury her father. And there is Yea-Ming Chen, the former lead singer of Dreamdate and current lead singer of Yea-Ming and the Rumours, also playing a version of herself who has moved in with a roommate but otherwise plays birthdays and other hourly gigs to pay the bills. The plot switches between the women as they struggle with various feelings about and for Goh.
For Rachel, it comes down to feelings about Goh and a past that never was. For Erika, whose clinical depression is finally offered as context to what came off as general malaise in the previous movie, the issue is one of a static marriage, which interfered with both her and Goh’s dreams. For Yea-Ming, things are slightly less easily defined, as her fling with Goh was brief, mostly superficial, and not given as much development. That is certainly where I Will Make You Mine stumbles, but through the performances by the director and Fujitani, the movie finds its surprisingly big heart. Even Nakamura’s performance is wearier, which only makes sense: His star hasn’t exactly been born yet, but the music takes on a more soulful life here, when applied to characters who need to hear it right now.
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