“Mail Order Wife” is self-reflexive in more ways than one.
Co-writer/director Andrew Gurland plays the filmmaker within the film, also named Andrew Gurland.
While he and co-creator Huck Botko have an outrageous time skewering white male sexual and racial attitudes, their increasingly funny situations cut so close to the bone that you can’t help wondering how much of their own misogyny made it into the mix.
Whatever, the result is a uniquely raw, cruel and unfortunately honest comedy with solid acting. Those not irretrievably offended by it will laugh their heads off – some, maybe out of rueful recognition.
Gurland pays the costs for Adrian (Adrian Martinez), a chubby doorman from Queens, N.Y., to import a bride from Burma. In return, Adrian lets Gurland film him and the lovely Lichi (Eugenia Yuan).
Adrian treats his English-impaired wife like a live-in maid. Then he dreams up far worse ways of treating Lichi.
Eventually, she turns to the far more educated and sensitive filmmaker for help. For all the obsessive craziness that ensues, matters never leave the realm of plausibility.
If this film version of Gurland is at all like the real thing, I’m worried for him. But I hope he keeps making movies as gutsy, discomforting and slyly uproarious as “Mail Order Wife.”
“Mail Order Wife”
***
R for language, sexual situations|1 hour, 32 minutes|MOCKUMENTARY|Written and directed by Andrew Gurland and Huck Botko; starring Andrew Gurland, Eugenia Yuan and Adrian Martinez|Opens today at Regency Theatres at the Tamarac.
