In writer-director Walter Kim’s Banana Split, a bad timing mix-up forces two strangers to share an apartment for a long weekend in New York City. The setup is simple, but it quickly turns into a pressure cooker of grief, avoidance, and the kind of honesty you usually only get when there’s nowhere else to go.
Photographer Peter Lee (Min-Gu) just landed in New York City to pack up his late sister Julie’s former apartment. But his journey begins at Times Square, where he offers to take photos of tourists in front of famous landmarks. What they don’t know is that Peter slips in a selfie of himself in the group photos. Why? When Peter finally arrives at Julie’s apartment, the landlord tells him he has a few days to get it all out. Then, just as the super leaves, Alice Chen (Jessica Chung) shows up. Apparently, she’s the new tenant, and the super made a serious scheduling error just before leaving for the weekend. Alice has just broken up with her girlfriend and has nowhere to go, so Alice and Peter agree to an awkward roommate weekend.
When Alice sees Peter’s quiet, reserved side, she decides to make him her project for the weekend in exchange for his help with the move. Alice takes him to late-night boba shops, Korean BBQs, and Chinatown hotspots. They talk, argue, and Alice digs into Peter’s sore spots, particularly about his sister. The two share the experience of having parents who are disappointed in them. In fact, Alice has yet to come out to her parents as they send her an endless parade of potential husbands.
“…a bad timing mix-up forces two strangers to share an apartment for a long weekend in New York City.”
I’ll start by saying that Walter Kim’s Banana Split is very Asian-American. Being Asian in America is a recurring theme in the film. In all honesty, as a 50-year-old Asian-American, I’ve never talked about the subject this much with my Asian friends in my life, but I get it for this film. Much of this conversation is about what it means to be Asian and the differences among Asian cultures
The one issue that Banana Split zeroes in on is our inability to be open about our personal struggles. While Peter is quiet and open about not wanting to discuss certain subjects, Alice overtalks and overshares her opinions about others, while keeping her own experiences at the surface. She’s more concerned with fixing Peter than with fixing herself. This is the primary interaction between Peter and Alice. Pushing and pulling. Stretching and contracting. It’s an odd friendship that develops between two people who may not have been friends under normal circumstances.
I do like the insights that are uncovered between the pair in Walter Kim’s script. My only negative is that it feels very much like a stage play, with dialogue that feels heavily scripted. Sometimes the actors sound like they are just reciting lines of dialogue rather than having a natural conversation. The biggest tip-off is when characters’ responses come off too quickly, rather than taking time to digest what a person says before responding. Believe me, this happens a lot with emerging filmmakers. It’s all about allowing actors to find their way through the dialogue until it feels natural.
Ultimately, as an Asian-American myself, Banana Split feels very familiar. I love seeing our stories on screen in a refreshingly authentic way.
Banana Split screened at the 2026 Dances with Films New York.
"…very Asian-American."
