Fun with Lobby Cards: "Push"

Push, coming out this month, is a tender story of cultural - and emotional - loneliness. A cinematic child of Lost in Translation, Push is a story about a man who feels lost in a world he doesn't understand, and the effect two quiet women have on the course of his life during one chilly summer in someplace that looks vaguely Hong Kong-y. Or, like the future. People are lonely in the future; it could work.



We begin with our hero, Joe Caucasian, and his sidekick, Young Lady Where Are Your Tights.




Joe Caucasian has come to this bustling city to forget/stalk the woman who rejected him.




"Look, I said I don't want to sit up chastely all night and tell you my favorite color, damn!"


Wow, is he gonna be in for some wacky hijinks when he meets sassy underage tights-shunner Dakota Fanning.



Girl's probably a clever scamp living on the streets, and she doesn't own a brush, but she knows how to use pomegranate juice she finds in the sewers to create these kicky highlights.

I bet their first meeting is something really sad, like he sits down to cry and it turns out he's sitting on her leg and just couldn't see it because it's too thin to cast a shadow, and he's all like, "You should probably put on some tights or pants or something," and she's probably all, "Let's try some delicious regional cuisine!" (Delightful scamps like to cutefully wheedle meals out of clueless idiots.)

However, the other people in the restaurant think that hanging out with a fourteen-year-old is sort of a questionable activity.



Also, they are in the middle of a much cooler move about being awesome and having tea and dressing well and looking hot. Wouldn't that movie be nice?

Joe Caucasian makes a bunch of comments about how gross Chinese food is, which really pisses the shit out of Djimon Honsou, who thinks that if you go to Hong Kong and someone offers you some chicken feet or some shrimp with the heads on, think about buffalo wings and tripe for a second before you flip out like a weenie and start flinging insults about "what the hell people eat in this country". (Djimon watches a lot of Anthony Bourdain.)





Joe Caucasian is still not down with the chicken feet. At all.



His rakish young friend disapproves of his cultural insensitivity, which is funny, because I sort of disapprove of twelve-year-olds standing around pulling their miniskirts up to show a little leg, but look what happens! Circle of life.



(Seriously, I know Jodie Foster was about the same age when she did her Child Hooker type part, but it was skeevy then and it's skeevy now! No offense, Jodie, if you read this; I'm sorry, I really do love you. You were the best in Contact.)

Joe Caucasian becomes despondent over his beloved's recalcitrance and his young friend's desertion - he tries to heal his heartache with drink, with recognizable meat chunks, even with a good fistfight against some of those Hong Kong action gangsters who just stand around all the time waiting for something to do.



Stay cool, boys.

However, nothing helps, and soon enough realizes his problem has never been with the cuisine, or even with the city; the problem has been within his own heart, not listening to the world around him, not listening to the quiet song of true love, and not listening when his crush object points out that she and Djimon are actually married and Joe needs to piss off already.



I guess that even in the future your favorite blazer will always shrink in the wash and then you'll have to just yank it closed anyway and hope no one notices that the arms are too short.


Shored up by this knowledge, and realizing he has never known his own heart, Joe runs smiling through the streets, his heart light; he now knows true love, and love is a street-smart scamp with inappropriate outfits! The only barrier now is cultural misunderstanding, and the fact that she's nine.



That'll be a fun meet up with his parents back in O'Hare.