2 hours ago
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The warmth, richness and approachability of this lovely film from Singaporean director Anthony Chen, a graduate of Britain’s National Film and Television School, returns him to the family drama style of his 2013 debut Ilo Ilo; with care and connoisseurship, he again draws on the influences of Edward Yang and Tsai Ming-liang, but Chen’s instincts are less oblique. He dots the I’s and crosses the T’s; the film-making is forthright and wholehearted though not unsubtle.
The film is set in Singapore, criticising the city-state’s conformism and infatuation with the rich and western prestige, and satirically showing the high-wire dangers of its entrepreneurialism, as attempted by the poor. Koh Jia Ler plays Junyang, a goofy, good-natured but shiftless twentysomething guy who lives with his widowed father Boon Kiat (Andi Lim) in a cramped rented flat. Junyang is about to finish his military service and now needs to figure out what to do with his life – but he certainly doesn’t to work on his dad’s noodle stall, that humble business that puts food on their table. His girlfriend Lydia (Regene Lim) is far more aspirational, a gifted pianist with her sights set on university. Lydia’s stern, churchgoing single mother – hardened by her own husband walking out on them both – does not approve of Junyang one bit.
Chen shows us a romantic crisis in the lives of father and son happening in parallel. Junyang and Lydia opt to lose their virginity in a massively expensive one-night stay at Singapore’s mega luxurious Marina Bay Sands hotel, the icon and centre of its international prestige. That results in pregnancy for Lydia, and her mother grimly insists Junyang does the right thing and marries her. At the same time, shy, decent-minded Boon Kiat falls in love with one of his drinks waitresses or “beer aunties” – the smart, kindly, seen-it-all Bee Hwa (Yeo Yann Yann). I was reminded of a maxim from film-maker and critic Mark Cousins: if you want your film to be a success, include a wedding scene. Chen exuberantly gives us two, for father and son.
So now the two couples, one with a baby, have to live together in the tiny flat – a far cry from Marina Bay Sands and the glitzy beachfront apartments that Junyang is now selling in his new job as flashy estate agent. (He has the western name of “Steve”, after Steve Jobs.) Tellingly, Junyang/Steve gets drunk while celebrating a supposed sale to a smooth buyer whose promised deposit hasn’t yet come though – and bizarrely tries to use the bathroom in the show apartment, only to discover the water doesn’t work. Similarly illusory is the promise of easy money by selling medicines via social media.
There’s some addictively brash storytelling here from Chen, with a page-turning novelistic energy and a marvellous sympathy for the whole cast.
