If I were to sum the film up with an analogy, it would have been
eating a bowl of soup noodles with a fork.
You have in front of you, a bowl of goodness but all the tastes just falls away the moment the noodles touched your lips as all the soup have drained away by then.
I can't even describe how bad it was.
Sorry,
Sheylara. I am not going to sugar coat this unlike the rest of our more diplomatic friends who praised the film regardless.
((( Spoiler Alert )))
The film opened with two girls who supposedly are great buds together heading up to KL to seek assignments from a casting director based there.
Along the way, the director is trying to tell us that these two girls while having the same immediate goals ahead are vastly different people.
One pees in the bushes, the other can't. One loves to swim in the sea and under the sun, the other don't. Get the picture?
It was a Pan-Asian vs Plain-Asian rivalry at first where Pan-Asian character Alexia (played Evelyn Maria Ng) has everything going for her while Sandra (played by
Sheylara) being the supposedly less commercially marketable Plain-Asian one was struggling just to barely keep up, even when sexual favours was thrown in.
So the resentment turned into jealousy and jealousy into rage. The whole rivalry was brought to a boiling point with a fight scene in the KL back alley.
Perhaps the best part of the film was the fight scene that was so real that one of the passer-by Auntie stepped in to break up the fight, not knowing that it was just a film shoot. Yeah. Auntie got her 2 minutes of fame as the footage was kept on.
Back to the story...
As a result of the fight, both were booted out of KL as they headed back to Singapore but only after killing the casting director. Was the body in the suitcase that they set fire on? Maybe? Maybe not. Well the rest of us prefers the latter as we are trying to make sense of whatever logic the movie has to offer.
So the scene cuts to Sandra and her husband getting into a fight as the latter correctly guessed that the wife slept with another man while up in KL.
This is when it all starts to go downhill which wasn't a really long trip to the bottom anyway. So out of the blue pops out the husband? Huh? Where did this guy come from? No head no tail just appear like that?
Same goes for Alexia's female lover who the scene cuts to her bedroom. Another no head no tail of event sequence logic. OK, so there was a female-on-female love scene for like 5 to 10 minutes of the entire movie and suddenly this flick is "
the first contemporary Singaporean film to portray female homosexuality"?? Just like that?
Finally, it ended with a nude Alexia lying on the bed waiting for her supposedly second lover.
OH COME ON! Was it even necessary to have her out of her clothes? What real purpose does it serve? You mean to tell me that the story goes entirely the other way had, she lie on bed completely clothed?
Sounds to me the director deliberately put it in so as to get the R-rating which for some illogical rationale makes the film more "risque", "edgy" and "artsy"?
BOLLOCKS.
To me, film is a story-telling session. Be it commercial or indie, you have to tell a story properly. Regardless. It is basics 101. It seems to me that the director is just being tardy. There is no heart in this film.
The storyboarding was not done properly, if any to begin with. I doubt if anyone scripted the dialogues and just left it to the actors to figure it out en route.
The flow of the scenes is jagged akin to putting together a jig-saw puzzle.... with a hammer.
A lot of issues were opened but left unattended. The director may say that it was deliberately done so to leave it open ended for the audience to draw their individual conclusions.
Talk Cock lah.
I will believe that something is deliberately left open ended only when I am convinced that there is a way to close it.
Sadly in this flim, I was not. It was like a person answering your question with another question when it was so obvious that he did so because he was clueless.
OK, enough of the film. Next was the panel Q&A. That was another highlight of the night.
You should have been there to see these people talk!! Aiyoh. They speak as if they know more about the film than anyone else. Even the actors themselves!!
"Hi, I am a literature student, blah blah blah......."
"Hi, I am a film student, blah blah blah...."
I tell you, I rolled my eyes sooooo far back that my eye sockets hurt.
So? The rest of us peasants cannot appreciate the film better than you ijjit?
By the way, it was a
Friggin Fish Farmer that pointed out to everybody that the casting director was killed in the movie. I'd bet 99% of the audience didn't catch that.
I didn't although I did notice the blood stains when the two girls were hugging in the bathroom which finally made sense when the very clever
Fish Farmer helped me piece everything together. I don't need my hammer liao.
I-S magazine gave the film 1/2 star out of what i presume to be 5 stars maximum.
The magazine editors are real softies. Really.
*****
Dear
Sheylara,
I hope you had fun in this production but it was a valiant effort that bore no fruit. I am sorry that the director did not step up to the plate to contribute as much as you have.
Perhaps, you should choose your scripts and directors more carefully next time.
p.s. this is just my humble 2-cents which I am sure 1,001 people out there would readily disagree with me. Let's just call it a difference of artistic opinion. Wokay?
Cheers.
Jay "My Eye Sockets Still Pain" Walk
*****
Image Credit: http://southeastasiancinema.files.wordpress.com
- Voxeros
10. JayWalk left...
Monday, 17 August 2009 11:36 am ::
'L Kit Yan: Meanie you!
