Father and son wrestle with love in a small Malaysian fishing village. While father looks up an old lover he should have married years ago, his son faces a dilemma. Will he choose the girl he's in love with, or the daughter of his boss?
The young Ah Fei lives in a small fishing village, where he catches and sells frogs. His bachelor father Ah Kau is a fisherman. The old man sees his death approaching and goes looking in a nearby village for a woman who was his great love, but whom he did not marry back then. His son is in love with a girl who only wants a relationship if he earns more.
The son goes to work in a factory and faces a dilemma when his boss wants him to marry his daughter. While the father regrets the decision he took in his youth, his son looks as if he's about to make the same mistake.
Woo Ming Jin, one of the great Malaysian film talents at this moment, tells the story with beautiful images of an authentic fishing village, with an eye for local decay.
PROGRAMMER NOTES
What is so special about water for Woo Ming Jin? And about fish? The Elephant and the Sea (2007), the film by Ming Jin that is related to this film in its mood and ambience, was also filled with water and fish. Anyone who is his friend on Facebook may be able to see the answer. Whole albums of photographs of what the proud fisherman has taken out of the Mekong River or a lake by the Amazon.
There are more or less two ways of using a location. As background or as couleur locale and adapted for your story. There's also another way and, if it's done well, this yields the most authentic films. This latter way is to integrate it and allow the location to function thematically. That is obviously the approach of Ming Jin.
A beautiful example of this is when the young protagonist goes out collecting cockles with the daughter of his new boss. They stand deep in the silty water on both sides of a floating box. They have to prise the cockles from the river bed and Ming Jin takes plenty of time to show how that's done. They really are working. As a result you also believe what happens between the boy and a girl.
GjZ