Ali and Ratu Ratu Queens

For cinema club, we watched an Indonesian movie called Ali and Ratu Ratu Queens.   A boy goes to New York to find his mother who had abandoned the family when he was five. He finds a place in a household of Indonesian women who are all working to save money to start a restaurant. The film is an ode to New York as a setting for a painful set of encounters between mother and son as she rejects and abandons him all over again. The found family trope and the unconvincing romance subplot provide some laughs and "heartwarming" moments, but mama has a new family now and doesn't want her unwelcome kid to spoil her new family. Ugh. Inconvenient details about visas and out-of-state tuition for the college happy ending are ignored.