Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom

It's a sad fact that in modern Ireland, our own language is a virtual non-entity, kept alive by the government, with it's status as the nation's official language, and in pockets of the west of Ireland. This situation is satirized brilliantly with this film, about a young Chinese boy who, wishing to escape his humdrum life in China, decides to go to Ireland, so studies the Irish language in the mistaken belief that we speak it! When he gets over no-one understands him, thinking he's speaking Chinese. Unfortunately this would be a realistic conclusion. This is certainly a fantastic short & is so simple in it's storytelling that you could be forgiven for not noticing the subplot, that as a nation we must get a little of our culture back before our language dies completely. A must for short film fans.

My only complaint about this movie is that it is too short! It is a little gem, and you don't have to speak Irish to enjoy it. But if you are familiar with situation in Ireland, where the language is rapidly dying out and most people don't speak a word of it, even after spending years in school learning it - in fact many people have a violent antipathy toward it - the film will be all the richer for you.

Anyway, Daniel Wu's performance is comedy gold. I was in stitches when he did his impression of Robert De Niro speaking Irish. I also liked the perky but clueless Australian hostel attendant.

The basic premise of the movie is not as far-fetched as you might think. Some years ago I met a guy from a Caribbean island who now works as a chef in the Aran Islands and speaks fluent Irish. And with the booming Irish economy attracting people from all over the world, you can go into even the smallest village and are as likely to find yourself dealing with Ethiopians, Estonians and Ecuadorians (to mention just the E's) as with native-born Irish people.

Anyway, you can watch this movie for free on the web so if you are at all intrigued, do a google or youtube search and enjoy!

Ended up seeing "Yu Ming" when went to see "In America" and it made the trip to the cinema that night worthwhile. It was so much better than the main film and all I could talk about the next day. It makes you realise how defunct the Irish language really is, even though it's supposed to be our national language, but does so in a humorous and original way. The sequence where Yu Ming imitated Robert DeNiro in Irish had the whole cinema in stitches, and when he arrives here you really feel for him as nobody understands him after all his efforts at learning the language, especially when the barmen assume he's speaking in Chinese. On the whole I think this is one of the best shorts I have ever seen and know that next it's on TV I'll make an effort not to miss it.

"Yu Ming is Anim Dom" ("Yu Ming is my Name") is an extremely clever short film that speaks volumes with a very simple, straightforward narrative. The film follows young Yu Ming, a young Chinese man, who is bored with his life working in shop for his family. A dreamer, he randomly picks a spot on a spinning globe to move to and comes up with Ireland. Checking out a book in the library, he learns all he can about Ireland and sees that Gaelic is their official language. Yu Ming then sets out to teach himself the language. Upon moving to Dublin, Yu Ming finds that no one can understand him. Because of this he feels as though he is not speaking it correctly and does not understand that most of the people can only speak English and they mistakenly think he's speaking Chinese. Although comical, it is sad at the same time and shows an outsider more interested and knowledgeable in the Irish culture than the natives themselves. It shows a loss of cultural identity that may or may not be reversable after so many years. I have to say that the film inspired me to learn more about Gaelic as well: GJUNG is Anam Dom. : )

For many reasons, it seems to me a sort of piece of porcelaine. For story and for performance, for loneliness of You Ming, for the decision to escape from a suffocated circle and for the impact with a world who , teoretical, is more than familiar but so- so different by his expectations. The basic virtue - it seems an adaptation of one of Jonathan Swift texts.