Justin Chon's new drama Blue Bayou captures that spirit of 90s indie arthouse like no film I have seen for quite some time. That's a compliment, from me anyways.

It begins with a scene stylised like a hand-painted postcard sent home from family travelling through South East Asia, and we'll slowly unpack this over the course of the film.

It's a dormant memory rumbling around the head of Antonio LeBlanc (Justin Chon).

Antonio is a tattoo artist in Louisiana, lived and grown up around The Big Easy for most of his life, having been adopted by an American family from Korea at age 3.

He enjoys a loving family environment with his wife Kathy (Alicia Vikander), adopted daughter Jessie (Sydney Kowalske) and with a baby on the way, but a very frosty tolerance from his mother-in-law Dawn (Geraldine Singer).

That loving environment is about to be torn apart after a skirmish with Kathy's ex-husband Ace (Mark O'Brien) and his on-duty police colleague in a local supermarket.

Despite Antonio's adoption and his American upbringing, it turns out his adoptive family weren't thorough with his naturalisation paperwork and, 30 years later, Antonio's arrest brings his questionable citizenship status under the scrutiny of the law.

With a looming court date approaching, Antonio is pulled in many directions, finding the money through whatever means to pay his legal fees for a hearing that might allow him a slim chance of staying in the country, and to reconnect with estranged family to provide character witness statements for his trial.

Justin Chon is that thing in the film world called an auteur - a filmmaker with a singular vision at full control of his work.

Four features in, it may be a little too early to absolutely hang that auteur title on him, but Chon makes a strong impression both behind and in front of the camera.

As a writer, his screenplay is full of ideas, and perhaps an additional edit might have cut that running time down (though it's not the three hours of the latest Bond film).

But his dialogue is well shaped, and he allows for a handful of impressive big moments.

As a director, he is very skilled managing those big moments - robberies, violence, but also intense family drama. Some of those big moments are quiet as well, including Vikander singing the Linda Rondstadt song that gives the film its title, in full, the camera not moving from her face through the full length of the song, her eyes betraying the stress and pressure of a woman whose family may be about to break apart.

The cinematography from Ante Cheung and Matthew Chuang supports Chon's vision, handicam work following Antonio around Louisiana streets on his motorbike, or lushly shot picture postcard compositions of the bayou backwoods.

The lighting and set design emphasise the blue of the film's title as well in a range of hues.

Chon also stars in his own film with a natural and heartfelt performance as Antonio.

Acting-wise, there isn't a wrong note, particularly young Sydney Kowalske who could have made or broken the film depending on her believability as a girl who has already been abandoned by her father and now may lose her adopted father.

Chon's film makes a series of complex statements about family, summed up in a line of dialogue 'Waterlilies look like they've got no roots but they do, they wouldn't survive without them.'

The line is spoken by Parker (Lin-Dan Pham), a woman who Antonio befriends in a hospital lobby and who represents a connection to Louisiana's large Asian community that he, growing up with white families though the foster system, never connected to.

Chon concludes the film with snapshots of real-life victims of the arcane citizenship regulations that have sent many folk who grew up thinking they were American 'back', deported, to countries and languages completely alien to them.