Flower in the Pocket review
By Chris Chew
Rating: 6/10
Liew Seng Tat’s debut feature film Flower in the Pocket isn’t quite like most Malaysian indie films. For one, it is arguably the funniest film to have emerged from the new wave of Malaysian filmmakers. Shot in 11 days, the latest from indie production house Da Huang Pictures (of which Liew is a co-founder) has already garnered its share of international film festival awards, yet its inherent accessibility somewhat steers it away from the oft-frustrating trend of making abstract arthouse flicks in the name of indie.
Set in Kuala Lumpur’s cruddy township of Jinjang (where Liew grew up), Flower centres around two brothers, Li Ahh (Lim Ming Wei) and the younger Li Ohm (Wong Zi Jiang). Their single dad Ah Sui (director James Lee) is a mannequin maker who finds creepy solace in having one of his female half-body plastic companions sit next to him in the van. He is preoccupied with his job and health, thus leaving his sons to carry out their daily activities without any nurturing or guidance. So tasks like waking up for school, preparing dinner or resolving brotherly wrestles are carried out with bumbling acumen—no more than one could expect from these scrawny boys. And yet the self-styled life is hardly uneventful: there is the thrill of discovering tomato ketchup, the ragged attempts to raise a stray puppy and the measured excitement of making a new friend in Ayu (Amira Nasuha).
Undeniably, there is a latent sadness in this portrayal of the boys’ lonesome, orphaned condition. Yet Liew doesn’t succumb to melodrama, instead finding a fresher angle in conveying humour through the boys’ devilish antics. Their ultra-lovable, wide-eyed performances provide Liew with a most innocent vehicle through which taboos can be addressed without fear or judgment, so that dangling penises, open air defecating and honest questions about the tudung become commonplace. Liew also seems to take great delight in fleshing out the cheek from the most inane of moments, such as when Sui visits a uber-beng doctor or when co-worker Mamat (Azman Hassan) offers some deadpan advice not to make the mannequin’s tits so realistic. You can almost hear the director’s sniggers from behind the bushes.
While the film’s cultural undertones cannot be denied, it is the more universal themes that manage to bubble to the surface, albeit inconsistently. The boys’ lack of parental love from Sui is contrasted with Ayu’s genial mother (Mislina Mustapha), who takes great delight in her daughter’s new friends coming over. Such obvious juxtaposition appears a tad incongruent in a film which mostly operates on connotation, but it does serve to exemplify Sui’s inaction. More pertinently, growing up is never trivialised. You can never quite shake the thought about how these kids will turn out 15 years from now, but then you recall the times when you, too, ate ice cream by the drain, and got sent to the headmaster’s office, and so a mysterious air of comfort descends. Everything could just turn out alright.
Yet because so much remains unspoken in Flower in the Pocket, so much can be piled onto it. Will the boys end up as aloof as daddy? What’s wrong with daddy’s health? And what happened to mum? Indeed, inserting a multitude of meanings would be a convenient exercise, and most viewers would certainly have the credibility to foretell what kind of repercussions those childhood moments will have. But doing so might just miss the whole point. Liew’s film thrills most when the lenses watching it are stripped of their over-analytical mindsets. That such an affable production could fall on our laps via the mind of a 29-year-old debutant only doubles the pleasure. Pocket change, this is certainly not.
FLOWER IN THE POCKET
Release Date
20 December 2007
Genre
Comedy
Director
Liew Seng Tat
Cast
Lim Ming Wei, Wong Zi Jiang, James Lee, Amira Nasuha, Azman Hassan, Mislina Mustapha
Running Time
1 hour 37 minutes
Language
Mandarin & Malay with English subtitles
Classification
U