Fridae

Jack Neo, eat your heart out. After cornering the market for heartlander movies so long to the point of complacency, someone (or rather, some couple) has finally come along to break his monopoly.

That couple is the husband-and-wife team Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen, whose new and very watchable dramedy Singapore Dreaming deals with the hopes and aspirations of ordinary Singaporeans — chief among them the obsession with cars, condos, credits cards and other symbols of affluence. Though the film is far from perfect, it has its soft weeping heart in the right place. The characters dilemmas and predicaments can certainly be identified by Singaporean audiences.

Veteran actors Richard Low and Alice Lim play the patriarch and matriarch of a typical middle-class family living in a 3-room HDB flat. The return of their spoilt son (Dick Su) from his studies in America is cause for a big celebration. But tension arises as his elder sister (the extraordinary Yeo Yann Yann) shows signs of jealousy over the unbridled affection the patriarch showers on his only son. Subsequently, a tragic event occurs, testing the limits of familial bonds...

Written and directed by Goh and Woo, Singapore Dreaming boasts a sound script. (Goh, as many Singaporeans would know, is the founder and editor of the satirical website www.talkingcock.com which frequently pokes fun at Singaporean behaviour and obsessions.) However, neither Goh nor Woo are born filmmakers. Whereas other directors like Eric Khoo and Royston Tan display a fine sense of visual style their films, Goh and Woo's film looks like an unremarkable TV soap opera, with simple camerawork and soundtrack.

Thankfully, the cast is fairly strong, with standout performances by Richard Low and Alice Lim as the parents. The film's biggest coup, however, is the fiercely talented Yeo Yann Yann. As the long suffering elder sister, she gives the most perfectly-pitched screen performance this reviewer has ever seen in a Singaporean film. It is largely through her that one can truly observe what it's like to be the average Singaporean struggling to keep up with the rat race and lead an emotionally rewarding life at the same time.