By John Corrado

★★★ (out of 4)

The 2023 Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival runs from May 25th to June 4th in Toronto, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here.

The Canadian coming-of-age drama Golden Delicious centres around Jake (Cardi Wong), a Chinese-Canadian teenager in his last year of high school in Vancouver, who is facing pressure from his dad George (Ryan Mah) to become a basketball star. George is trying to live out his own failed dreams of playing professional basketball through his son, but Jake is struggling to live up to the expectations of his masculine father.

This is partially due to Jake being closeted gay. While his girlfriend of two years, Valerie (Parmiss Sehat), is begging to finally go all the way, he is more interested in Aleks (Chris Carson), the new boy who has moved in across the street. Aleks is openly gay and loves playing basketball, which ignites a newfound passion in Jake as he starts to come to terms with his own sexuality.

The feature directorial debut of filmmaker Jason Karman, working from a screenplay by Gorman Lee, Golden Delicious hues closely to the coming-of-age (and coming out) genre, but does so with feeling and a sense of cultural specificity. The story sensitively explores the push and pull within immigrant families of trying to live up to parental expectations. In the main subplot, Jake’s mother (Leeah Wong) resents the long hours she spends working in the family restaurant, while his sister (Claudia Kai) loves to cook and wants to work in the kitchen, but their parents don’t want her following the same path as them.

If Golden Delicious is a somewhat formula-driven film that cycles through a number of beats we have seen before (right down to the possibly queer-coded homophobic school jock who bullies Jake), it’s a testament to the good performances and universality of these themes that the story remains engaging across roughly two hours. It’s a consistently entertaining film that offers are a number of undeniably rewarding moments.

Screenings: Saturday, June 3rd, 11:45 AM at TIFF Bell Lightbox 1; Sunday, June 4th until 11:59 PM – Virtual (across Ontario). Tickets can be purchased here.