There’s a lot to commend in this film, and as usual Yeo Yann Yann gives a really good performance. She’s a Malaysian who lives in Singapore, playing a Malaysian who lives in Singapore. The classroom scenes are authentic, although we’re frequently reminded that Edward Yang is the true master of depicting Asians in classrooms.
As with “Ilo Ilo”, it’s one of those films that frankly depict the crushing pressures on middle class Singaporeans. Yeo Yann Yann is rapidly becoming the human face of that class, if you remember her acting in “Singapore Dreaming” as well. But sometimes I feel that this gritty realism, this “let’s dump some shit on the working class and train a camera on it” can go too far.
Why does the teenager feel like some blank space for you to project stuff on? The classmates are your regular faceless brats. Is the focus of the movie on the miserable life of the teacher, or is it on the burgeoning relationship between the teacher and the student? What is the deeper function of the language barrier between the teacher and all the other English speakers? This hindrance in communication makes it feel like you’re operating with one hand tied behind your back. What can you truly express in that way? Why is her life so shitty? Why is everybody so mean to her? Her fellow teacher, the father-in-law that she has to take care of, the emotionally distant husband, random passengers on the road. Her head of department, her relatives.
There was a scene, where the teenager and the teacher were facing each other, and the school marching band marched through the middle. IT’s a scene that I remember from Edward Yang’s “Brighter Summer Day”.
The problem, other than that everybody is lining up to shit on her, is that there doesn’t seem to be much of a thematic unity in that unremitting endless stream of shit other than it provides the impetus for her to seek emotional release in the teenage boy. (And even their sex scene looks so rape-y). The biggest problem is that while the teacher is interacting with a fairly large cast of antagonists, many of these antagonists only make a brief appearance. None of them seem to be particularly well formed, and it sometimes feels as though their sole purpose is to depict what a bad life the teacher has.
What would it have hurt to throw in a little humour, a little bit of being articulate.
Music Composition 