'Shortcomings,' a small film from the competition of the indie festival Sundance, has been released digitally. Here's why you should pay attention to this film—in our review.

Ben (Justin H. Min) dreams of a career as a screenwriter and, if lucky, a director. For now, he settles for managing an arthouse cinema and dating the slightly more successful Miko (Ally Maki), who helps organize local film festivals. His life also includes a slightly less misanthropic friend, Alice (Sherry Cola), with whom he frequents the same places, drinks coffee, and complains about life. After such eventful days, Ben spends his evenings watching classic films—from Ozu's 'Good Morning' to Baumbach's 'Frances Ha' (you can spot the DVD on the couch!). It seems his melancholic infantilism could last forever, but Miko, tired of their constant arguments, unexpectedly leaves for film school in New York, Alice becomes increasingly active in changing her own life, and the unpopular cinema edges closer to closure.

Left without Miko, Ben wanders around San Francisco in search of a sympathetic ear, only to find new problems. Calls with his girlfriend end in disaster, and his attempts to explain to everyone in the world that they are living wrong and understand nothing only lead him to greater loneliness.

'Shortcomings' is one of those many films in release whose description can start with immediately recognizable references. It's a quiet film—'The Graduate' for millennials and 'Frances Ha' for guys. Important viewing references include 'The Worst Person in the World' (which some people, and the author of this review is not alone, consider the best film of last year), from the more recent past, the moderately wonderful 'Amanda' that was in theaters this summer, and from the greats, 'The Heartbreak Kid' by Elaine May. The debut film by Randall Park (an actor known, among other things, for a supporting role in Marvel) shares particularly much with the latter: a protagonist of questionable moral character, a floating intrigue, and, of course, attempts not so much to fulfill the American dream as to understand what it actually is.

Against this backdrop, Ben is hardly an original character, but the creators try to give him some individuality beyond his love for classics and knitted sweaters. An important motif of the film, for example, is that Ben is completely unconcerned with his Asian heritage and laughs at modern Hollywood's trends toward increasing representation. Watching a tasteless remake of 'Pretty Woman' with Asian actors at a film festival, he doesn't celebrate representation but laughs at the bad film.

This modest, cheerful film is built from such small observations. The authors want to speak about many things at once, and they succeed with varying degrees of success (though the best classic films also suffer from this—for example, the wonderful film by Truffaut, 'Stolen Kisses', which Ben could use a viewing of). An important theme—modern Hollywood's pursuit of total representation at the expense of project quality—is explored well and with taste: Ben moves from total rejection of this practice to restrained patience, and then to touching understanding. Some potentially more interesting themes, on the other hand, are only touched upon in passing, though not without success.

Ben's toxic relationships with Miko and two other girls (one of whom, incidentally, is wonderfully played by Debby Ryan—a find) are, on one hand, shown well and accurately, but on the other, there seems to be too little of them. Although regarding Miko, the film allows itself rather decisive sarcasm: this progressive girl in every sense goes so deep into understanding herself and self-love that she ultimately fails to notice anyone else. The hero accuses her of duplicity, and it's hard to say he's wrong.

At the same time, Ben is, of course, himself a duplicitous abuser and terribly imperfect. He laughs at romantic relationships as a concept because no one is ready to watch 'The 400 Blows' with him for the tenth time; he constantly complains about life without trying to change it; he quite justly criticizes everyone around him while refusing to turn his penetrating gaze on himself. Like many millennials, Ben is excellent at observing life but terrible at living it, and his sarcastic comments on everyday life turn out to be more interesting than life itself. Marginal notes on history at some point overshadow the main text.

One can criticize such a situation within the framework of storytelling—and such self-absorption doesn't really make the film more interesting—but essentially, it's an important observation of modernity. The hero of 'The Graduate' was bored with life, his surroundings, the absurdity of dreams, but he had no option not to live that way. The hero of our time, on the contrary, tired of his class's lifestyle, can exclude himself from its reproduction but seems deprived of the ability to truly reinvent his life. This existential uncertainty also rhymes with the quite mundane rootlessness of migrants, even third-generation ones.

Honestly, 'Shortcomings' doesn't fully develop this thought and stops halfway. But in the end, this half-baked film teaches us the main thing—that we deserve at least to be judged not by our worst actions and worst moments, but by who we want to be. Even if we only succeed every other time. Perhaps we should treat this film the same way: it has, forgive the pun, some shortcomings, and many moments in the plot lack depth, but still, one can see in this film not an Asian version of 'The Graduate,' but something more. Even if only partially.