" Flame love is not the best fuel for the hearth.
Chinese folk wisdom
When you sing a melody to yourself, you are always on the boundary between reality and our dreams. Through the thickness of a pleasant purring, only what we can insert into our reality breaks through. If you sing rhythmically for a long time, the border is erased. It is almost impossible to restore it.
Cambodian Chinese woman June loved to sing. She also loved her son Kai very much. And Kai loved Richard. The plot is the exact opposite of the classic love triangle.
The focus, of course, is on the son’s relationship with his mother. The same scene is played several times in a nursing home. The viewer seems to get on the carousel, which is promoted by the director. With each circle, you lose reality more and more, but you understand it more. Throughout the film, we analyze this family, and when we learn a new fact, we find ourselves in that situation again. June talks to Kai, while Kai talks to himself. The more you look, the more you understand. June is a loving mother who gave everything to her son and husband. Her sacrificial love made them happy. But now old age has come and there is no strength to endure such inconveniences. All she needs is a beloved son, his attention and care. All this the actress tells us without words. The dialogue in this film attracts with its lack of words, giving way to meaningful and flashy pauses. Gestures, facial expressions and what little she says, the best way to draw her image.
Kai is an attractive young man with Chinese-British blood in his veins. He's incredibly beautiful and caring. However, he is windy and indecisive. We learn about this guy’s quirks only from one sentence: “I like to ride buses.” Perhaps that was the feeling he lacked in life: to be part of the whole. His family stopped giving him that opportunity when his father died. His beloved tried in vain to fill this void. The love of Richard and Kai is shown as a subtle bond between two souls who suffered in their own way in this world. We see this in fleeting memories. All the feelings of the heroes are expressed in movement, in the desire to console each other. The director with great painstakingness shows the relationship between the two guys.
However, the author very skillfully translates our attention into a completely different direction. He leaves the two corners of the triangle alone, without the third. Now Richard and June will have to make direct contact. A mother comes face to face with the cause of her troubles - the man who shared her with her son. And Richard is forced to carry Kai's burden in double size. It’s hard to judge from an observer’s perspective: you can see both sides objectively. But everyone who worked on the film makes you cry with the unfortunate Chinese woman left in her old age alone and unable to survive in a foreign country. You call a soul like Richard, who lost the one he lived for and took over the burden of his family and memory. This is a very strong moment, because the characters enter into active forced communication with all its consequences: scandals, tears, disorders, stubbornness and thoughts of suicide. You feel twice as much emotion when you're worried about both, and the tragedy seems even more dramatic.
A difficult situation in the relationship is accompanied by a wonderful sound range. Stuart Earle creates almost unearthly, weightless compositions that seem to be absorbed into the skin along with the meaning of the picture, and then washed away with tears from what they saw. A kind of heat of emotions is also the Chinese rehash of the famous American song. It gives us the opportunity to feel like June. Cinematography also helps in creating images and enhancing the dramatic effect, here you can only admire.
As for the dark side of the film, it is not that it is not, but it is so balanced by the sensuality of the characters that does not leave a chance for the viewer to notice it.
9 out of 10
