Employing a verité style somewhere in between experimental home videos and gorilla filmmaking, Good Luck Soup is Matthew Hashiguchi’s complex love letter to family, identity and tradition in the celebrated heartland of America. The documentary’s main theme of immigrant identity in the United States (US) is presented with admirable degrees of artistic and pedagogical success. Despite presenting a remarkably rich portrait of racialised difference and individualised struggle, however, Hashiguchi falls somewhat short of illuminating how his film’s central theme would make more sense if situated within larger historical and contemporary contexts of Asian exclusion in the putative West. Methodologically, the film utilises home video images, personal interviews with family and archival footage to interrogate belonging and exclusion through questions of US citizenship, previously legal and currently ‘cultural’ (Rosaldo 1994). Immediately, the film sets a tone of matter-of-frank intimacy. In this way, Good Luck Soup is a highly personal exploration of Japanese American life in a region frequently overlooked: the Midwestern US. Viewers are introduced to Cleveland-based Japanese Americans through the vision of one self-described ‘half-Japanese and half-white’ American man, Hashiguchi (and his extended family). The film’s opening scene sets this tone with home video scenes of Hashiguchi as a child accompanied by his narration:

中文翻译：

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祝你好运汤

《好运汤》采用了实验家庭录像和大猩猩电影制作之间的Vereté风格，是Matthew Hashiguchi向美国著名腹地致家庭，身份和传统的复杂情书。该纪录片的主要主题是美国（美国）的移民身份，在艺术和教学上取得了令人赞叹的成就。桥口尽管展示了关于种族差异和个人化斗争的非常丰富的肖像，但是他并没有阐明他的电影的中心主题如果位于假定的西方将亚洲排除在外的更大的历史和当代背景下将如何变得更加有意义。从方法上讲，这部电影利用了家庭视频图像，对家庭和档案录像进行个人访谈，以通过美国公民身份问题（以前是合法的，现在是“文化”问题）来质疑归属和排斥（Rosaldo 1994）。影片立即为坦率的亲密关系定下了基调。这样，《好运汤》是对日裔美国人在一个经常被忽视的地区（美国中西部）的高度个人探索。通过一个自称为“半日半白人”的美国人桥口（及其大家庭）的愿景，向观众介绍了克利夫兰的日裔美国人。电影的开场场景以桥口小时候的家庭录像场景和他的叙述为基调：“好运汤”是对日裔美国人在一个经常被忽视的地区-美国中西部-的高度个人化的探索。通过一个自称为“半日半白人”的美国人桥口（及其大家庭）的愿景，向观众介绍了克利夫兰的日裔美国人。电影的开场场景以桥口小时候的家庭录像场景和他的叙述为基调：《好运汤》是对日裔美国人在一个经常被忽视的地区（美国中西部）的高度个人探索。通过一个自称为“半日半白人”的美国人桥口（及其大家庭）的愿景，向观众介绍了克利夫兰的日裔美国人。电影的开场场景以桥口小时候的家庭录像场景和他的叙述为基调：