This is a quiet gem of a film that focuses on the everyday lives and livelihood of a Korean family’s dry-cleaning business in the thriving Asian diaspora of Flushing, Queens. Happy Cleaners manages to bring to the screen not just the everyday lives of one immigrant family but is also able to transcend its immediate subjects to speak to the broader immigrant experience, in America in the 21st century. The tension that sets the film’s momentum going is when the Choi family’s lease runs out on their dry cleaners, and they all have to suddenly rethink their future lives.
The Choi kids, Kevin and Hyunny, are beginning to get restless and are obviously hungry for change in their lives: Kevin is planning an LA trip, while Hyunny is drifting more and more toward a serious long-term relationship with her boyfriend. We see generational sparks begin to fly, especially as the tensions related to the continuance of the family business begin to rise. The directorial hand here is steady and unfailingly objective: there’s never a point at which the film seems exploitative or manipulative in any way. The lack of stylistic bells and whistles is refreshing, as we get a simple intimate slice of life portrait of an immigrant family in transition, seemingly always in danger of slipping to the margins of society or being swept away by the oncoming rush of gentrification.
The members of the Choi family show a quiet tenacity throughout the film that somehow convinces you that they will persevere no matter what the cruel indifference of the city throws at them. Although certainly nothing remotely fancy stylistically, Happy Cleaners is simply an enjoyable and quietly inspirational portrait of the modern Korean diaspora in America. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Sandlin)