Surrogate Valentine is a mellow feature film which is a subtle departure from Dave Boyle’s previous works, which include the 2009 movie White On Rice. Surrogate Valentine is reminiscent of a relaxed drink while White On Rice is a sharp blast of laughing gas. Surrogate Valentine uses a form of storytelling that is relaxing with some rhythm. The co-writer along with Boyle and Joel Clark, San Franciso-based musician Goh Nakamura, captures the essence of the main character perfectly. The energetic singer/songwriter portrays a softer version of himself and gives a decent performance in his first film. He is cast into the male lead which is considered romantic and we have to admit he does not look the part. He has a lot of charm as long as he remains quiet and it is only when he picks up the guitar to sing that he starts turning heads. And at that point he possesses ample amounts of charm and wit to capture attention.
And there’s the rub. The character Goh, as confident as an artist could be, approaches most other aspects of life with little ease. This is not apparent at first, mostly because he conceals his discomfort with an attitude of relaxed hipster cool. His reserve works sufficiently well to cope with the difficulties of being a struggling indie musician, like sleeping in the car during tours or getting turned down for contracts by record label distributors. Or, when he reluctantly agrees to help out a filmmaker friend by teaching guitar to a boisterous television actor, the even more boisterous Chadd Stoops, doing research for a part but who instead overplays it. But in his love life, it is more complicated than that his loving passivity toward a nutty Seattle groupie is the source of some easy laughs, but hints at far more troubles to come, which they do when Rachel, his old high school sweetheart, comes to see him. Goh has been stuck on Rachel for fifteen years. The film has a slow burn as Goh works through the stirring emotion with a lot of patience, but as he does, it is hard to understand why the film makes it seem like so much of the plot revolves around him building up the courage to take action.
Which may require some form of patience. By the time I reached the midpoint of Surrogate Valentine, I started becoming tired of Goh’s inaction. My initial reaction as a person who has lived in the Bay Area for most of his twenties was that this is a quintessential Northern Californian film. Even though no one smokes marijuana in the movie, it still has what one may characterize as a stoner undertone: monotonous speech, delayed responses, and half-hearted attempts at conversation. My girlfriend, who was watching alongside me, made the more straightforward, yet more accurate observation, that this is a very Asian or Asian American movie people do not wear their emotions on their sleeves and are usually very hesitant to follow through on them. We brought you mumblecore, mofos. Being emotionally retractile is not a trendy choice for us, but it’s a part of our culture. Once I understood that Goh’s struggle to profess his love was somewhat intentional, I became more interested in the film and it managed to keep my attention till the very end.
One of the great lies of Hollywood is how it makes this country appear so much simpler than it is. Stories about white people are assumed to be universal, while stories of other races are regarded as special interests or niche. Independent filmmaking breaks free of this type of thinking. Dave Boyle has now made three successive films about Asian Americans. The surprise isn’t that Boyle is as white as his name suggests it is that he has made three films in a row about Asian Americans. It shouldn’t be an astonishing achievement that is so commendable, but it is. Even more, Surrogate Valentine is an Asian American film that is first and foremost a love story and, in my opinion, the best kind of love story sweet, funny, and at times, melancholic.
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