Sisters of Mercy

Am I doing this right?: Eve (Phoebe Jojo Kut, left) tries to be as virtuous as her sister, Karena (Hollie Lo). Photo Bob Akester. Courtesy Mongrel Media.

Eve & the Fire Horse is such a quiet, clear-eyed meditation on childhood that you barely notice as it burns its way into your mind. And when it’s over, you’re left with this magnificent maze of memory, a latticework of images lifted from the sweet and sombre playground world of two young sisters.

Vancouver filmmaker Julia Kwan seems to have carried this story in her head for years, so easily does it fuse religious iconography (both Eastern and Western), pop-culture residue, the Canadian immigrant experience, complex familial bonds and a young girl’s searing endgame with fate. Despite all these layers, however, Kwan’s debut feature — which she wrote and directed — never tips toward pretension. It is a modest picture, but also resolute, and absolutely enthralling. It’s no wonder that Eve & the Fire Horse arrived at this year’s Sundance Film Festival covered in garlands (it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the People’s Choice award at the Vancouver film fest).

The film opens with the Eng girls, Eve (Phoebe Jojo Kut) and Karena (Hollie Lo), cross-legged and face-to-face in the family yard. It’s mid-’70s Vancouver. They’re partway into a round of patty-cake. “My sister told me that God leaves a mark on everyone,” says nine-year-old Eve, introducing us to the two forces that come to shape her story: a hard-boiled 11-year-old sister and an unwavering fascination with religious belief.

Eve & the Fire Horse revolves around a family of first-generation Chinese-Canadians. The working-class Engs see superstition everywhere; it’s how they navigate their lives. Eve’s father (Lester Chit-Man Chan), who works in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, can’t hold on to money because of his crooked fingers (which also serve as a visual metaphor for a gambling addiction). Her mother (Vivian Wu) can’t account for the spirit that compelled her to chop down the family’s apple tree, an impulsive act that portends bad luck for the entire household.

Eve’s own burden is unique. Born in 1966, the year of the fire horse, she carries an omen of deep, devastating consequence. According to the Chinese calendar, the sign only recurs every 60 years, and those children born under it are thought to be trouble and saddled with ill fortune. When Eve’s mother miscarries and her paternal grandmother (Ping Sung Wong) suddenly dies, Eve is convinced that she’s to blame.

Proud new owners of a Caddy: The Engs celebrate a new addition to the family. Photo Chris Helcermanas-Benge. Courtesy Mongrel Media.

After an unexpected visit by a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses (and a courtesy copy of Living Together in Heaven on Earth), Karena discovers Christianity — a bridge, perhaps, between the Engs’ Buddhist heritage and Western religion, between an Asian and Euro-Canadian identity. Dogged and unsmiling, Karena draws Eve into her born-again faith. They dub themselves the Girls of Perpetual Sorrow. Their mission? “To do good in this world,” which includes bringing happiness to a family in mourning.

Hardly a fashionable route to assimilation, the girls’ newfound faith is a source of some of the movie’s funniest and most moving moments. “I’m not into Jesus,” says Karena’s Sikh classmate after being lured to a covert, after-school conversion party.

Wide-eyed and perpetually puzzled, Kut perfectly captures Eve’s cultural and pre-adolescent confusion. Her imagination is a bursting amalgam of traditions and literal-mindedness. She’s prone to seeing things: Jesus and Buddha dancing in the living room; her goldfish reincarnated with an operatic voice. As the child of Asian immigrants in a mainly white community, Eve is always a little out of joint.

“Are we poor white trash?” Eve asks at one point, after Karena describes a girl as “PWT.”

“Don’t be stupid,” her sister scolds. “We’re not white.”

Eve & the Fire Horse will inevitably be compared to Double Happiness (1994), Mina Shum’s edgy coming-of-age story, which was set in a similar Vancouver Chinese community. But if you put the subject matter aside, Kwan’s aesthetic feels closer to more recent films: the slow melancholy of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation or the period detail and sibling sensibility of Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale.

Kwan has created a visual scheme grounded in earthy colours — browns, greys, beiges — and the gorgeous, late-afternoon West Coast light. Locating the action in the 1970s allows for some easy nostalgia (Pop Shoppe drinks, the girls’ vow to watch “all 14 hours of the Jerry Lewis telethon”), although the choice of era is more than just cosmetic. Now 39, Kwan has had more than three decades to digest her own childhood; as a result, the setting feels utterly authentic and necessary to giving the film emotional and narrative clarity. Kwan moves between cultures with incredible ease — much like the Eng girls, who absorb their parents’ Cantonese and respond in English. In a movie about claiming your own little corner of the world, Julia Kwan has produced an inspired generational document.

Eve & the Fire Horse opens Jan. 27 in Toronto and Vancouver.

Greg Buium is a Vancouver writer and editor.