Michelle Yeoh shows Asian immigrant women are ‘Everything’ SPOTLIGHT
At 59, Yeoh commands the lead of the genre-twisting flick by playing someone often invisible — the Asian immigrant wife and mother trying to be everything for everyone. “An independent film on steroids” as she puts it, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” recently went into wide theatrical release. It ranked fourth in this weekend’s domestic box office, bringing in nearly $6.2 million, according to figures compiled by Comscore.
Yeoh’s performance is drawing raves at a time when Asians and Asian Americans of all age ranges continue to be the target of pandemic-fueled racism in Chinatowns, cities and suburbs across the U.S. But reports have found Asian women have experienced these hate crimes at a higher rate.
After decades first as a star in Hong Kong cinema and then more mainstream hits like “Tomorrow Never Dies” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” the Malayasian-born Yeoh has grown into a movie queen. She’s had integral roles in what have been the first large U.S. studio movies in years with all-Asian casts—Marvel Studios’ “Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings” and “Crazy Rich Asians.”
“So much weight was on (‘Crazy Rich Asians’) ... What if we weren’t as successful as that? Did that mean that we don’t deserve to be up there?” Yeoh said. “It exploded and the way it did made everyone realize, ‘Hey, we’ve been neglecting this very major part of our society for so long.’ ”
As much as those films mean to her, she was a polished supporting player in them. “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is a whole otherworldly experience where she gets to play “an aging Asian woman.”
Written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known as the Daniels), the story centers on a glammed down Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, a frazzled laundromat owner preparing for an IRS audit. Meanwhile, she is struggling with an unhappy husband (Ke Huy Quan), her critical father (James Hong) and an openly lesbian daughter (Stephanie Hsu). She is literally upended when another version of her husband pops up claiming to be from another universe. Evelyn ends up jumping through the multiverse and picking up skills possessed by her otherworldly counterparts.
The story is a wild laundry list of action, sci-fi, comedy and family drama that includes people with hot dogs for fingers and a giant everything bagel. The first word that came to Yeoh’s mind after reading the script was “insane.”