“Bitter Melon” is a family recriminations drama distinguished mainly by being set among an ethnic group that is underrepresented onscreen, Filipino-Americans, and by its willingness to roil a holiday formula by going to some disturbing places.

Declan (Jon Norman Schneider) has flown in from New York, Moe (Brian Rivera) from Philadelphia. The gentrifying city they were raised in has changed — the home front, not so much. Troy (Patrick Epino), who still lives with their mother (Josephine de Jesus), has never left, unlike the brothers’ abusive father, who abandoned them long ago.