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Advantageous (2015)
Director: Jennifer Phang
Producers: Robert M. Chang, Ken Jeong, Jacqueline Kim, Moon Molson and Theresa Navarro
Length: 91 minutes
View the film on:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhBh1YALYi8
- Netflix
- Amazon Prime
Synopsis
Advantageous follows the story of single-mother Gwen and her daughter Jules. In this familiar yet advanced dystopian future, Gwen struggles to make the best choices for her and her daughter in an increasingly unstable job market. Women are disposable, becoming unemployable as they age, so when Gwen is released from her job as a high-profile spokesperson for the Center for Advanced Health and Living, she must act quickly in order to afford her daughter’s education at an elite institution. What lengths will Gwen go to to secure her daughter’s future?
Significance
Advantageous began as a short film project, brought to Jennifer Phang by the Independent Film and Television Service. With there being so few sci-fi films focused on women’s issues, Phang jumped at the chance to produce such a story. With co-writer Jacqueline Kim, who starred as Gwen, Phang and Kim crafted a film that won the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize. For the next two years, Phang utilized her community and industry connections to mold the short into a feature length film. Kim convinced acclaimed actor-comedian Ken Jeong to join the production, letting us into a rarely seen serious side of the actor. Advantageous premiered exclusively on Netflix in 2015, a big win for the smaller-scale independent film. Kim sees the film as the start of a new genre of “domestic sci-fi” (Sundance). Advantageous exemplifies Asian American women’s excellence, centering a narrative not often seen in the male-dominated sci-fi scene. It forces audiences to contend with important issues like what [women’s] standards for survival are as Phang discusses in an interview at Sundance.
The filmmaker: Jennifer Phang (b. 1975)
Chinese-Malaysian-Vietnamese American writer and director, Jennifer Phang, is a graduate of Pomona College in Media Studies as well as the American Film Institute. Her debut feature film was Half-Life (trailer), a story about family and strained relationships where two kids attempt to escape their semi-apocalyptic surroundings. Half-Life garnered international fame, receiving both the Gen Art Acura Grand Jury Prize and the Asian American International Film Festival Best Feature Film Award. Since then, Phang has produced other various feature films with Sundance Screenwriters Lab, going on to work on many well known television series, including Riverdale and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Phang recented directed Disney’s Descendants: The Rise of Red, the fourth movie in the ongoing Disney Descendants series.
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Further reading and listening
- Liu, Linda Ai-Yun. “The Dubious Logic of Sacrifice: Motherhood, Crisis, and Social Reproduction in Advantageous (2015).” New Review of Film & Television Studies 19, no. 2 (June 2021): 145–72. doi:10.1080/17400309.2021.1875725.
- Miller, T. S. “Precarity, Parenthood and Play in Jennifer Phang’s Advantageous.” Science Fiction Film & Television 11, no. 2 (June 2018): 177–201. doi:10.3828/sfftv.2018.15.