---

I wonder this sometimes and I’m sure you do, too: What would my life look like if I’d decided to do B instead of A? Would I be happier and more successful, or should I be grateful to live with the aftershocks of my choices? Whether there exists somewhere out there alternate realities steered by decisions unmade and paths untaken is, of course, tantalizingly unknowable. But in their jubilantly bananas third feature, Everything Everywhere All At Once, filmmaking duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert humor the possibility not with more speculation but grab-you-by-the-lapels certainty. 

Our conduit for exploration is found in Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), a middle-aged Chinese-American immigrant who co-owns a flailing laundromat with her mousy husband, Waymond (a terrific Ke Huy Quan). When we first meet her, it seems unlikely she’s ever quite been this stressed. The business is in the middle of an IRS audit, and she has a meeting with a grumpy-pants inspector (Jamie Lee Curtis) to get her receipts sorted out soon. She’s hosting a Chinese New Year party later tonight and is frantically preparing food when she has pockets of free time. Her estranged elderly father (James Hong), who once disowned her, has just flown in from China; now his disapproving glares won’t exclusively live in her bad memories. Her 20-something-year-old daughter, Joy (a knockout Stephanie Hsu), with whom she has a fractured relationship, is antsy to know whether she can invite her girlfriend (Tallie Medel) to the festivities, what with a conservative patriarch in attendance. Then she accidentally discovers that Waymond, hurt by his wife’s long-standing treatment of him as an annoyance, is about to serve her divorce papers.

Read the full column on 425.