In “Forge,” writer-director Jing Ai Ng never reveals the secret recipe for the lacquer that has made it possible for Raymond (Brandon Soo Hoo) and Coco Zhang (Andie Ju) to pass off their replicas of fine art as the real thing. But the scientific elements involved are beside the point, for the second-generation Chinese American siblings know it’s confidence that will play the biggest role in convincing experts in the field that they’re in possession of legit paintings from local masters. After all, they’ve spent years watching their parents struggle with that dynamic in a culture that wasn’t their own.
Although Ng’s energetic debut feature has the expected crackerjack appeal of two underdogs attempting to outwit those with all the power, the real excitement comes from posing a more interesting version of the question of what is real. It may only be a matter of time before Raymond and Coco are found out by the authorities, yet there’s no telling when or how they’ll feel like they’ve actually made it as part of the culture they were born into.
The term “imposter syndrome” isn’t ever directly referenced, but Raymond and Coco have clearly been laboring under it for some time, being every bit as talented as their peers but perhaps pushed there by the sense that their best is simply not good enough. Beyond their ability to find the right alchemy to re-create old paintings, the two have strong chemistry as a team.
Raymond, adopting an entrepreneurial spirit from an early age to supplement the family’s sparse income, began a business in fake IDs while in high school. His younger sister Coco, a former art student who eventually had to leave her studies to take care of her ailing father, can speak with authority to the depth of every brushstroke of the artists she learned about, making the act of actually putting it down on canvas entirely natural.
Raymond and Coco may not be struggling when “Forge” begins, but they look like they’ve reached rock bottom as they meet with a low-rent art dealer (T.R. Knight) for their first sale in a sleazy roadside motel. The quality of the knockoff may pass muster, but what really sells it is Coco’s performance as the inheritor of the rare piece of art, pretending she finds it hard to part with a family heirloom. Pulling off that scam gives her a greater confidence in taking on bigger jobs, inspiring her to engage with a wealthy family nearby who’ve expressed an interest in art collecting.
Raymond stages a run-in with Holden (Edmund Donovan), the grandson who now controls the collection. Rather than Raymond having to sell Holden on acquiring new paintings, however, the trust fund kid makes his own pitch. It seems his floundering events business has led to a cash crunch and the family’s art collection was largely destroyed in a hurricane, requiring duplicates to be created to be resold as originals.
There is some occasionally clunky expositional dialogue and contrivances in service of the plot, particularly when it comes to the FBI agent in the art crimes unit, gamely played by Kelly Marie Tran, attempting to figure out the source of the forgeries flooding Florida in recent months. The fact that Tran’s new-to-South-Beach Agent Lee is set on the path of cracking the case by asking her colleagues if there are any good Chinese restaurants in the city could cause some to roll their eyes for various reasons. But the amusing subversion of the idea that as the token Asian on staff, she’d be the one expected to know is indicative of how Ng can effortlessly bring up the thorny power dynamics at play.
As the relationship between Holden and the siblings starts to go south, there may be consequences for both, but Ng draws a potent parallel between how much more the Zhangs have to lose when they’ve had to invest so much more of themselves when starting out at a deficit compared with a guy born on third base.
Like its characters, “Forge” can feel at times like it’s boasting a bigger game than it can actually pull off, but Ng and crew bring a real swagger that give the caper all the energy of an “Ocean’s 11”-level production without having the same resources. It is also driven by a star-making turn from Ju, who is magnetic as the morally slippery Coco whose remarkable poise would make her a formidable poker player. There may be a tragedy at the heart of the film as Coco realizes that the art of the con holds more value than anything she’d be capable of painting, but it’s stirring to see that even after being satisfied with a lacquer that can withstand scrutiny, there’s still so much going on beneath the surface.
