Nathan Xia: Flavor of the Month and His Visual Idiom

Nathan Xia's Flavor of the Month nests neatly within a visual world he’s been refining: tight contrasts between private embarrassment and performative righteousness, a palate that alternates deadpan colour with stripped-back, documentary textures. The short’s press-junket opening shot on DV, the anamorphic glamour that elevates Harrison’s self-image, and extended single takes that stage conversational unravelling all read as variations on a clear, recurring grammar.

That grammar is political as well as aesthetic. Xia has framed the film as a corrective, a satire that asks artists to examine ambition and solidarity. "For Asian American cinema to truly progress, we must set aside our egos." — Nathan Xia (director; artist). This quotation is the director speaking, not a line from the film.

Visually the film leans on collaborators who double as interpreters of that idea: Ayinde Anderson’s lens choices make Harrison both grand and ridiculous, while Annie Becker’s production design constructs a claustrophobic playground where virtue-signalling reads as stagecraft. The humour grows from scene composition as much as from dialogue; Xia’s decision to let actors improvise within meticulously designed frames produces comedy that feels earned rather than merely performative.

Read as part of Xia’s catalogue, Flavor of the Month sharpens his interest in identity as theatre — the camera continually asks whose performance we are watching and why.

Credits: Director Nathan Xia; Cinematographer Ayinde Anderson; Production designer Annie Becker.