IN Wayne Wang's first feature, "Chan Is Missing" (1982), two taxi
drivers go looking for an absent friend in San Francisco's Chinatown.
As they piece together contradictory testimonials from those who knew
the missing man, what emerges is almost a composite sketch of
Asian-American identity. But the film, which still feels fresh and
insightful after all these years, is a mystery without a solution. Its
conclusion, unencumbered by the foggy rhetoric of identity politics,
is that identity is hard to pin down, up for grabs, something you make
up as you go.
The point applies equally to this versatile director's unpredictable
career. For more than 25 years Mr. Wang, now 59, has reinvented
himself time and again with apparent ease, zigzagging between America
and Asia, big and small movies, safe bets and wild risks, insider and
outsider status.
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