The City Never Sleeps

And it has been ages since i last blog. Think i am old and creative juice has been running out to be used as ink for this electronic quill pen...

Met Shyam for a movie and dinner after 1/2 year. And i brought him to Patrick Tam's latest production: After This, Our Exile.

Featuring Aaron Kwok, Charlie Yeung and Gouw Ian Iskandar, After This was like what Shaym says, a Hindi matinee soap drama. And i beg to differ.

Set in Ipoh, Perak (seems to be the 2nd movie set in Ipoh after watching Yasmin Ahmad's Gubra, the sequel to highly acclaimed Malaysian flick, Sepet), After This tells us a tale of a gambling-addicted father (Kwok), a disappointed mother (Yeung) and their 9 year old son torn between the parents. The son sense something is amiss when the mother treats him exceptionally well on a normal morning. He runs back home, and found his mother packing her clothings, decided to leave the family. Son runs to his father's workplace and inform him about his mother. The couple quarreled in front of their neighbours, and father had mother locked up.

After the mother expressed her disappointment towards him, father decided to turn over a new leaf. He brings the family for a cruise trip, but the mother did not go for the trip due to diahorrea, and it gives her an opportunity to run away to Johore Bahru with her new boyfriend. Faced with sudden loss of wife, the fiery-tempered father decided to find ways to get more money, so as to clear debts from loansharks. The son ends up stopped receiving education due to the constant runaway from the loansharks. They moved to a motel and father befriends a hooker. Son looks for mother in JB and found out that she was pregnant. Son left mother, and ends up a thrashing from father. Father attemped to runaway from loansharks but were caught by them, and ends up a broken leg from the trashing.

Father forces the son to steal from a rich family after the son stolen a gold watch from his classmate's house. The son fails, and was rescued at the last minute by the father. The father forces the son to steal again despite the son decided to quit. This time, the son was caught and arrested by the police. Father runs away and the son ends up in boy's home. The son bites off the ear from the father.

10 years later, the son is looking for his father, but do not recognise his father when he walked pass him.

The wallpaper features the father and son riding a bicycle, with the son holding a windmill. It looks lovely and heartwarming. However, behind this heartwarming picture, it lies a sad tale that is still happening around us today. The stubborn and hot tempered father who fails to reflect himself ends up losing everything.

Kwok makes a impressive performance, which in After This, it gives him a greater experience on exploring his roles. Never before in my life did i see a HK celeb could potray a role of lowly educated man from the rural part of Malaysia so well. (And this is much more better, compared to Jay Chou, who was horribly miscast in Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower.) Somehow, i am a bit disappointed with Yeung's skills on acting a woman in despair and the amount of times she could appear in the story. There are more rooms for her to display her talent, since she fails to disappoint her fans in films from her recent comeback.

Iskandar was the one that amazes me in the film. The 9 year od boy has not only displayed his innocence, but also displayed his emotions of being a troubled 9 year old.

And from my knowledge, there are 3 versions available for After This. One for HK, one for M'sia (M'sia audience would not be able to get a chance to see the scene where Kwok and Yeung displyed their affection on bed, that leads the movie to be rated M18 in S'pore.) and one for international. And since Jeremy is asking me to bring his gf and himself to JB, i think, i should brainwashed them to go for the film. :P