Children of invention

Chicago-born Tze Chun, a film studies graduate, produced a cute short about Sino-American kids, Windowbreaker, in 2006. He developed its Home Alone-ish concept for his debut feature, Children of Invention (2009). A single mother in Boston loses her job working for a hard-sell Ponzi scheme, and accepts an offer to live illegally in an apartment development's unused show flat with her young son and daughter.

One night she doesn't arrive home; the boy is soon obliged to find ways for he and his sister to survive in an uncaring world. The mother eventually returns, but the boy will take a long time to forgive her. A similar scenario was presented recently, with much more dramatic tension, in a Japanese or Korean movie, and there is only one major reason why this one has appeared at more than 50 film festivals.

There just aren't many English-speaking American feature films featuring the Chinese minority, in most years probably none, and Tze Chun filled a gap, if not a real need, competently. That's a patronising comment, akin to well-meaning efforts by film festival organisers to be deliberately inclusive on racial and/or demographic grounds.

The characters and narrative development of the two children or their actors are not special enough to warrant such special treatment, nor are references to contemporary socio-political issues such as mortgages and get-rich dreams.