Publication Date: 01-22-2026

Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (1985) review

Dir. Wayne Wang

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

Wayne Wang’s directorial debut Chan Is Missing was a deceptively layered, complex analysis masquerading as a film student’s noodling. From its early minutes, it laid the foundation for a great mystery of the whereabouts of an associate until it slowly established itself as a film about Asian identity politics. It was whimsical and natural, and slowburned its way into becoming the first Asian-American movie to receive international distribution.

Wayne Wang’s sophomore film, Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart, is also tethered to the Asian-American experience. It’s a serene family drama, brimful of quiet moments, abstract emotions, and lovely performances from Kim Chew and Victor Wong, who are total naturals on-screen.

The story revolves around Mrs. Tam (Chew), whose husband is long gone and adult children have moved out, save for her youngest daughter, Geraldine (Laureen Chew). Bartender Uncle Tam (Victor Wong, who would go on to star in Tremors) drops by, and proves to be a loyal companion, and you get the feeling the couple would be happy to live together if Geraldine was out of the picture. The lone thing left on Mrs. Tam’s bucket list is to return to mainland China to pay her respects to her fallen family members before she too passes away.

30-year-old Geraldine recognizes her own life has been arrested by her own propensity to care for her mother. She has a boyfriend in Los Angeles ready to marry her, but is there a part of her that’s using her mother as a deliberate roadblock because she has apprehensions?

It’s a deceptively complicated little drama, and Wang has great reverence for and patience with his characters. He has no problem using valuable minutes of the runtime to focus on a humble family dinner, or devote a stretch or two to Uncle Tam imparting old Chinese wisdom and some additional nuggets he’s picked up from a boozehound or two.

As I mentioned, Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart is a bit of a noodling. Wang’s unhurried style and conservative pacing sometimes leads the mind to wander, as it did in Chan Is Missing. The difference there was his debut’s attachment to humanizing a plethora of Asian-Americans, many of whom we believed he knew in real life. Dim Sum is conducted on a smaller scale, and probably needed a couple stronger, more interpersonal dialog between the characters as a centerpiece. However, it was one of the bigger arthouse hits for Orion Studios upon its release in 1985, which is surprising to see its contribution to Asian cinema as muted as it is in the modern day.

Starring: Laureen Chew, Kim Chew, Victor Wong, Ida F.O. Chung, Cora Miao, and John Nishio. Directed by: Wayne Wang.