Yolo (PG13)

129 minutes, opens on March 21
3 stars

The story: China’s beloved comedienne Jia Ling produced, wrote, directed and stars as an unemployed plus-size 30something who discovers boxing at her Guangzhou neighbourhood gym and, consequently, a sense of self.

Some respect, please, for Jia.

The then 38-year-old amassed more than US$839 million (S$1.1 billion) for her 2021 film-making debut Hi, Mom, to instantly become the most successful solo female movie director until Greta Gerwig of Barbie in 2023, and Yolo – “you only live once” in Netspeak – hit a US$418 million Chinese New Year box-office record through a similar mix of comedy and compassion.

Leying is the tubby depressive recluse she plays. The actress resists making the hapless protagonist an object of either ridicule or pity despite her beau (Wei Xiang) ditching her to wed her pregnant best friend (Li Xueqin), and her new love, a boxing coach (Lei Jiayin), having self-esteem issues of his own.

At least he introduces her to boxing, which sets her on her path of personal and physical transformation.

Jia got into character by shedding 50kg from intensive training over the year-long production.

Netizens labelled the weight loss a publicity stunt, when the film-maker has put too much of herself into this personal retelling of the 2014 Japanese sports drama 100 Yen Love for it to be so.

Crucially, the inspirational story is about self-love rather than body image. It is that of a woman bullied, exploited and shamed by friends and family, who finds the inner strength to hit back – and continue staying in the fight because one is a winner simply by being a better version of oneself.

Hot take: Here is an underdog heroine to champion. Her uplifting flab-to-fit dramedy is heartfelt and sympathetic.

American Fiction (NC16)

117 minutes, available on Amazon Prime
4 stars

The story: Jeffrey Wright, in a performance Oscar-nominated for Best Actor, is an African-American literature professor-cum-frustrated author, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, who bangs out a ghetto pulp fiction rife with poverty and crime because no one reads his highbrow publications. To his dismay, it becomes a bestseller for its “raw reflection of the black experience”.

American Fiction does not have the historical heft of Oppenheimer (2023) or The Zone Of Interest (2023).

Television writer Cord Jefferson’s (Watchmen, 2019) feature directing debut – which was also a Best Picture contender at the Academy Awards and a winner for Jefferson’s screenplay, based on the 2001 Percival Everett novel Erasure – has trenchant things to say about the present-day United States instead.

The comedy is a smartly funny satire on white culture’s inability to see minorities as anything beyond demeaning stereotypes in its preoccupation with race and representation. The cliched manuscript Monk intended as a joke earns him US$750,000 (S$1 million) from publishers plus a Hollywood movie deal, if also the attention of the police, because he had written under the alias of a death row fugitive.

The consequences of his hoax are outrageous.

They unfold alongside his struggles with his elderly mother’s (Leslie Uggams) dementia, his gynaecologist sister’s (Tracee Ellis Ross) sudden tragedy, and his estranged brother (Sterling K. Brown) coming out as gay.

Wright is marvellously dry as a malcontent, unfulfilled professionally and disconnected from his family. Monk is testy even in his burgeoning romance with a lawyer neighbour (Erika Alexander).

The entire ensemble breathes life into the flawed characters. The movie is a reminder that the “black experience” is vast enough to encompass one such messy and complex story of an upper-middle-class intellectual snob learning self-acceptance.

Hot take: The entertaining farce is a timely skewering of identity politics done just Wright.