Chinese-Canadian film a magic love potion

“Long Life, Prosperity and Happiness” is an aromatic feast of narrative elements that will revive even the most dejected of spirits. Award-winning director Mina Shum has gathered only the choicest ingredients in cooking up this tribute to her native Vancouver.

Love is the common theme that unites the three main courses — intertwining stories about the love between parent and child, between lonely adults, between long-time spouses. Mix together the many exotic staples of Chinese-Canadian culture, some world-class acting, a series of O'Henry-style plot twists and an overall mood of magical realism, and we get a balance of all three of the ancient Oriental ideals.

A delicate balance

Precocious 12-year-old Mindy (Valerie Tian) thinks her single mom, Kin, isn't getting her share of worldly comfort. Kin (Sandra Oh) doesn't have the time or energy for a relationship because she has to work two jobs to make ends meet, as a cook and as a telephone psychic.

Maybe, reasons Mindy, the deserved Happiness and Prosperity can be conjured with a dose of Taoist magic, available from the local appliance-repair shop that offers fortune-telling on the side.

As a side benefit, the charms might also help Mindy find her missing turtle.

But in seeking to meddle with fate, we should always be careful what we wish for. After all, the world is set on a delicate balance, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, and so on. And how do we know our manipulations won't also affect everyone around us?

A vale of tears

For that matter, don't we need to pray to the gods of longevity, wealth and joy precisely because real life is so full of struggles and suffering?

Take for example Mindy's neighbor Shuck (Chang Tseng), a long-time security guard who loses his job just as he's approaching retirement. Can he even admit it to his wife, or would he rather put on his uniform every morning and head cheerfully out the door, pretending everything is fine?

Or take another neighbor, the butcher Bing Lai (Ric Young). If he wins the lottery, will that help him overcome the heartbreak of being estranged from his father for years?

In fact, he seems to be developing similar problems with his own son, whom he expects to take over the business. Unfortunately, Junior plans on repudiating meat altogether and becoming a Buddhist monk.

And what of the charming restaurant worker Alvin (Russell Yuen), the one who's been wooing Kim though she can't be bothered? Mindy would love to get that romance off the ground by hook or crook. But will love's magic always keep Alvin oriented toward Kim?

All's well

One of the main ingredients in the success of this film is food itself. The restaurant where Kin works, with its colorful array of dishes, is the place where the various plot threads meet, where private problems give way to a life shared in public.

Another motif is color itself. Each of the film's subplots meticulously follows a palette of primary colors in supporting its themes. And the lighting — as well as the length of the lenses — evolves as the stories progress and converge.

This labor of love by an empathetic filmmaker brings together not only people but also the archetypal dualities of tradition and modernity, realism and levity, despair and miracle.

As one reviewer put it, “Long Life, Prosperity and Happiness” is “a comedy of Shakespearean proportions.”