Smoking Tigers
Written and Directed by So Young Shelly Yo
Starring Ji-young Yoo, Jeong Jun-ho, and Abin Andrews
Runtime 1 hour 25 minutes
In theaters August 16, streaming on Max August 23

by Shayna Davis, Staff Writer

Being a teenager is such an absorbing time in a person’s life. It’s that uncanny period where you’ve started to gain a sense of self and a pressure to carve a path to your future, but you don’t have complete separation from your childhood. You’re still very much tied to your family. It can be a lot to deal with at once! So much in fact, that adults created an entire genre of film to retroactively explore these feelings, known as “coming-of-age”. It’s probably one of my favorite genres, and one that takes deft writing and directing to not dip into major cheese territory. Thankfully, So Young Shelly Yo avoided the cheese and hit straight to the heart with her directorial debut, Smoking Tigers. 

Smoking Tigers follows follows Korean American teenager Hayoung (Ji-young Yoo) over the course of what will become a pivotal summer for her. Darting between newly separated parents, Hayoung clings to hopes of one day achieving a “normal” family life. One where her mother (Abin Andrews) doesn’t have to work all the time and her dad (Jeong Jun-ho) isn’t living out of his tile company’s warehouse. These hopes get turned into anxieties when, after being forced to spend the summer at an SAT prep school, she falls in with a group of cool, rich classmates. As the summer goes on, she learns some of the hardest lessons of being a teenager: people are not always as they seem, never let a cute boy give you a stick-and-poke, and parents are just people trying their best.

Though the premise of the film follows a fairly typical coming-of-age plotline (albeit through a entirely Asian American lens), a standout element of Smoking Tigers is the gorgeous feeling it achieves. The day-time scenes are absolutely drenched in Southern California sunlight and Hayoung is shown repeatedly reflected in mirrors, windows, and water. These visual elements, coupled with a lilting score, makes the viewer feel as though they are floating through each scene alongside its characters. Hayoung herself doesn’t even feel entirely tethered to the earth. 

In one particular scene, Hayoung sneaks into a house that she’s been desperately trying to convince her mother they should buy. Despite the fact they have little money, Hayoung is convinced that if they could achieve the exterior of a happy, middle-class family, then they will become one. She spends the night there, floating through the dark, empty building like a ghost. Quietly touching every surface, inspecting every room, and vividly imagining the family they could be. It’s a simple, quiet scene, but the feeling that Hayoung is in this phase of life where she’s just drifting along, dealing with everything as it comes, is made apparent. 

I’ve always considered it pretty unfair to compare movies. Regardless of similarities every movie deserves to be cirtiqued in it’s own light. However, it is super hard to ignore the resounding Lady Bird comparisons I’ve noticed online. Plot-wise, they do kind of exist on two sides of the same coin (both films end with a parental phone call that makes me cry like a total baby). That being said, the one resounding difference is their views on family. Lady Bird’s protagonist spends her story desperately trying to separate herself from her family. She lies to her new friends about where she lives and who her family is. She wants nothing to do with where she came from and craves independence on a molecular level (until she doesn’t). Though Hayoung also lies to the kids at school about where she lives, she doesn’t want separation from her family. She craves closeness to them. She wants a better life for everyone involved. It’s a view on growing up that I feel we don’t see very often from American coming-of-age movies. They’re usually all about what the main character has to learn on their own if they’re going to grow up. In Smoking Tigers, Hayoung learns just as many lessons about how to exist on her own as she does about how to exist with her imperfect, but loving, family. I found it very refreshing.