Goh Nakamura’s Surrogate Valentine Review

Surrogate Valentine Trailer HD from goh nakamura on Vimeo.

Have you read enough already about Goh Nakamura from us fanboys and fangirls over at 8Asians? Then tough boned-choadmuffins if you feel so! (I don’t actually know what that means either but it sounded good in my head at the time.) You can move along to read elsewhere but I need to take a minor moment to say how much I genuinely  enjoyed his new film, Surrogate Valentine at the Closing Night Gala of CAAM’s San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

The screening of Surrogate Valentine opened with Goh himself playing a few songs not featured within the film. The film, which is an augmented reality biopic (making it neither a documentary or complete fiction) about Goh Nakamura features wry writing and well acted dialogue with sly and believable whimsy in a thoughtfully pieced story.

Within the context of the film, our protagonist Goh is saddled with a douchebag, talentless, and often obliviously self-aggrandizing actor Danny Turner Chad Stoops) to teach him how to effectively portray a indie musician.  As the plot slowly unravels, we learn that the film that Danny is preparing for is closely scripted after Goh’s own life and his tentative and often clumsy efforts at romance with high school friend Rachel (Lynn Chen).

What we like about the movie: Smart acting with extraordinary comic timing, great use of black and white film, superb sound editing, plus a list of credits and cameos that highlights a lot of great artists within the Asian American community including Scrabbel, Invisible Cities, Brian Fukushima, and Derek Kirk Kim, who we learn is responsible for the epic winged-guitar flying into gigantic vagina cave illustration that’s on the wall of Valerie’s apartment in the film.

Yes, an epic winged-guitar flying into a gigantic vagina cave.

We’re also rather glad that the whole story within a story within sort of a story concept didn’t become wearisome and film-schooley.  And fans of Asian men in showers will get a smiley face bit of eye-candy for themselves, too.

A sequel for Surrogate Valentine is already in the works. For upcoming screenings, check the official Surrogate Valentine website!