Wednesday, March 01, 2006

"it's like being in love with someone who doesn't love you back."
I have the privilege of watching the premier of Gubra recently. It is already one of my favourite films of the year.

I wish the film is made in Singapore. Really. I don't know if the Malaysians might cringe a little when they hear the rojak of English, Malay, Mandarin and Cantonese spoken on the big screen, but I felt perfectly at ease with it. Strange, I cringe when I hear the same thing in Jack Neo's films ...

Watching the film was a heart-warming experience. The director makes effort to make us like, or love, most of the characters, of all their strange behaviour and habits, which translate to much comedy, and some conflict of course, but nothing that cannot be settled amicably.

There is naturally going to be some digs at popular issues like racial tension, age gap, faith at all levels, etc. It can get a little preachy sometimes, but these do not detract from the flow of the film.

I think the biggest lesson I learned from this film is about filming people, filming friendships, filming love. I wasn't really too impressed with the plot, but I thought the director did a wonderful job brining all these different people together. Sure, it was not easy to decide whether the film was trying to be a comedy, or drama, or social commentary, but I guess to try to label it would be to do injustice to it.

I hope this film does well in its local run. Please go watch it. Speaking of which, I need to go watch that vcd of Sepet that Anand passed me ...

♥ 12:41 am