SLAMDANCE 2023 Reviews: Linh Tran’s WAITING FOR THE LIGHT TO CHANGE finds emotional truth in its ambiguity
A few weeks ago, my cousin and I took a drive to the Hamptons to ring in the new year. The beach hotel we stayed at, typically overpriced and packed in the summer with sun-kissed influencers, was so empty and quiet that it felt like we had the place to ourselves. With calm waves outside our window and plenty of wine, we talked about the dumb stuff (why I shouldn’t tattoo the word “trill” to my wrist) and the deep stuff (what my cousin’s “break” from her longtime boyfriend actually meant). I listened as my cousin shared her fear of not knowing what comes next and how hard it is to let go of people she’d outgrown.
Waiting for the Light to Change, the feature debut of Vietnamese filmmaker Linh Tran, which just won the Slamdance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Film, also uses the off-season beach vacation as a backdrop for a very familiar coming-of-age story. After moving to the West Coast for grad school, Amy reunites with Kim, her high school best friend, and Kim’s boyfriend Jay (Sam Straley). Also joining them at Jay’s lake house is Kim’s cousin Lin (Qun Chi) and Jay’s stepbrother Alex (Erik Barrientos). As the week goes on, Amy struggles to suppress her lingering feelings for Jay, the guy who got away, and her resentment toward Kim.
But the brewing tension over the boyfriend isn’t the sole conflict: Jay is grieving the loss of his father. Lin is trying to move on after her recent breakup. Even Kim, who seems further along with the whole “adulting” thing because she has a career, a boyfriend, and a therapist, doesn’t understand why she feels so empty.
Yes, these all sound like very “twentysomething” problems (and yes, Alex doing palm readings sounds like a very “twentysomething” solution), but the characters are so relatable that even if your twenties were ages ago, watching them will immediately herald back the anxiety and angst you felt then.
Jin Park and Joyce Ha skillfully portray Amy and Kim with both the vulnerability and friction you’d expect a friendship reaching its natural expiration date to have. One minute they’re braiding each other’s hair, and the next they’re calling each other “old” or “changed”. Even in the silence, their eyes expressively show how their friendship’s fragile framework is one confrontation away from collapsing.
For a film that treats the tension amongst friends like a tide slowly rising, the third act doesn’t settle like a massive wave finally crashing to the shore. And while that may seem like a letdown at first, the resolve is realistic. A lot of how Amy acts in the end is how I approached the same issues not that many years ago, and honestly how I expect my cousin, who’s the same age as these characters, to deal with them now.
Most films on early adulthood are drenched in nostalgia and endings where miraculously everything makes sense. But the beauty of Waiting for the Light to Change, made by a group of DePaul University film students themselves coming of age, is the accuracy in the ambiguity. Yes, even in the most idyllic of settings, you’re not going to find all the answers, and that is truly okay.
