Growing up in Malaysia, Adele Lim remembers watching movies from Hong Kong ("where our stories were front and center") and those imported from America, that left her feeling "like America was this wonderful place where dreams do come true, and where your story can be told."
Lim moved to the States in the mid-'90s to study film and television, and she recalls, "It really wasn't until I got here where I realized that's not how the rest of the world sees us." She had a chance to personally change that narrative when she was hired to co-write 2018's Crazy Rich Asians, adapted from the novel by Kevin Kwan. The romantic comedy-drama was a hit.
"Crazy Rich Asians was an amazing experience in that, yes, it was about Asian characters, with an Asian creative team, but it was a movie for everybody," Lim explains. "It showed the studio system something we already knew, which is if your stories are compelling enough, if people emotionally connect with your stories and they feel authentic and joyful, people will show up for it."
Lim, who also co-wrote 2021's Raya and the Last Dragon for Disney — which was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar — now makes her directorial debut with this summer's Joy Ride. An original idea conceived with screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao, the R-rated comedy follows four unlikely friends on a debaucherous trip to China.
"My happy place is kind of splashy and commercial, and I want a good time, but I also want things with heart and that feel like they speak to me," says the filmmaker. "I would hope my next project continues in that vein — something wonderful that shows people an amazing, good time, gives them insight to new characters and a new world, and also speaks to them personally."
Below, Lim shares with A.frame five films that shaped her into the filmmaker she is today. "I'm just going to speak from the heart of what resonated with me, even as a kid."
Directed by: David Hand, Perce Pearce, William Cottrell, Larry Morey, Wilfred Jackson and Ben Sharpsteen | Written by: Ted Sears, Richard Creedon, Otto Englander, Dick Rickard, Earl Hurd, Merrill De Maris, Dorothy Ann Blank, and Webb Smith
One of the very first movies I watched was Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. We had it on a scratchy VHS tape, and I watched it until the tape broke. It's this amazing fantastical world that drew me in. You identify with Snow White. You identify with a young girl being the hero of a story, facing a world with the odds stacked against her and still, somehow, prevailing.
Now, the end of that movie may not stand up to today's standards of wokeness, but you know what? She was a hero throughout — barging into a house run by seven messy, short-a** men, and having to take the reins. That's the hero's journey right there. The Prince just swans in at the end, but she had to do the heavy lifting.
Directed by: Henry Koster | Written by: Joseph Fields
Flower Drum Song is the movie version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. And even though I was in Malaysia, it was that feeling of, 'Wow! America is a country that would embrace me, and embrace that story, and is a place where you could tell your story and have it be celebrated.' It sold a fantasy, a fantasy where you are celebrated.
Being able to watch a young male actor in an American parade for Lunar New Year, coming down a street in San Francisco dressed as Paul Revere, in that one little scene, it made you feel like, 'This is how the immigrant experience in America is celebrated in the 1960s.' And watching a beautiful young Asian woman sing "I Enjoy Being a Girl," with the amazing choreography, it just transported you.
And again, I was a little girl in Malaysia, a place that most people can't pick out on a map, feeling like that could be me, at least in my own fantasy version. That's the best thing about movies: People can watch it and see themselves living vicariously through those characters.
Directed by: Mike Newell | Written by: Richard Curtis
I always love a good romantic comedy. And I'm a big fan of Richard Curtis, so whenever Four Weddings and a Funeral comes on, I'm watching that business. And it is a romantic comedy, but the most joyful parts of it are the friendships. You have Hugh Grant, and his googly-eyed sister, and his group of friends. And, despite all the f**k-ups, all your bad decisions — of which there are many — there's always this core group of friends that's going to be there for you at the end of the day. That, coupled with the amazing, sparkling dialogue, and being plunged into this very specific British world. But the heart of it is this wonderful, warm group of people.
Directed by: Edgar Wright | Written by: Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg
Lately, I must be on a comedy kick, and Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz is a perfect marriage of style, and scope, and so much humor, but with this beating heart that drives the whole story. It's a very stylistic movie about a type-A cop who is driven, but can't quite figure out the personal relationships in his life. And he's sent to this sleepy, little village in England, but it's shot almost like Bad Boys. It's like this love letter to American action movies.
In the process of finding himself in this ridiculously idyllic village and uncovering something deep and disturbing under all of it, at its heart, he's got this wonderful, amazing love story with a buddy cop. It's splashy, amazing, endlessly entertaining, and leaves you with a lot of warm fuzzies at the end of it.
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn | Written by: Hossein Amini
Drive with Ryan Gosling has always stuck with me, because it's this meditative, emotional music video that's not necessarily plot-driven, but just makes you feel throughout the whole thing. It's interesting because I'm a writer and, as a writer, sometimes you want to think it's all about plot and the riveting dialogue.
But the magic of movies is that it makes you feel something. And whether that feeling comes from an exchange, or a piece of music, or the lighting, or the look someone has on their face in a quiet moment, you want to lean heavily into those magical moments that take the audience on this departure, on this journey. With Drive, I remember the first time those synthesizer notes came on, it's like the '80s feel, but it also speaks to a time where things were a little bit more earnest and simpler, but no less emotionally profound.
