Marrit's Couch/Random Film Festival: The Motel

Michael Kang's The Motel, 2005

I got deep into a beermosa and decided to host my own film festival on my couch, for myself. I the jury selected this debut feature from writer-director Michael Kang because it was the toast of Sundance and I could reach it easily from where I was collaring my kid in the video store. Plus it's 76 minutes long, which is the perfect length for a slice of pubescent boy life set in the confines of a backwoods family-run motel.

Backwoods family-run motel? Are there zombies?

A reasonable question. But no. There's a dorky Korean-American kid (Jeffrey Chyau) on the uphill climb of puberty, and he has to wash the sheets and vacuum the floors of his mom's hot-sheets motel in Poughkeepsie. He discovers porn, idealizes his best friend (Samantha Futerman), and learns some abrasive life lessons from the well-intentioned sleazebag in room 15 (Sung Kang), who pays with a fake designer watch and a declined credit card.

Clear-eyed but not grim in its conjuring of marginal adolescence, The Motel is produced by one of my favorite folks, Miguel Arteta, whose The Good Girl gives us Jennifer Aniston with Jake Gyllenhaal, and whose Chuck and Buck must be seen to be believed.