As well as a mother-daughter relationship, Charlotte Lay Kuen Lim's Tiger competitor My Daughter shows another side of her home town, she tells Ben Walters
Malaysian Tiger contender My Daughter tells the story of a mother-and-daughter relationship that goes against expectation: the mother, a hairdresser, is reckless and troubled, while her daughter is forced into responsibility, at the same time as dealing with her own problems. Director Charlotte Lay Kuen Lim expresses much of the story through strikingly handsome DV compositions that make a rich mise-en-scene of often dilapidated surroundings.
The debut feature started to take shape a few years ago, reports Lim. “I began writing the script in 2007, but the film is very different from the first draft. I didn't specify a mother-daughter situation at first, but as I was imagining a story, my mother appeared in my mind. Not that the character reflects my own mother!”
The mother is played by Chua Thien See, whom Malaysian audiences have seen in younger, more obviously sympathetic roles. “She's always portrayed as being in her mid-twenties or early thirties, even though she's somewhat older,” says Lay. “I had my doubts about casting her at first because she looks so young, but we had a few interviews and I was persuaded. I decided the character had probably been a young mother.”
Lay also went against the tide in her depiction of Malacca Town, where the story is set, and the filmmaker was born and raised. Although its city centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, she eschewed historic locations for everyday shops, streets and homes – a decision she sees as her own act of heritage preservation. “I wanted to preserve the look of the buildings, the saloons, the places people live and work in every day. There's a lot of development work in Malacca, and many of these sites are being lost – but there's history in people's lives.”
My Daughter received backing from the Hubert Bals Fund and Lay is keen to hail IFFR as a place of cooperation. “This is a festival where you can meet people who are really willing to help you,” she says. “You can feel the energy and there's a lot of constructive things going on. Meetings and small-talk are really helpful, especially for new directors like me.”
Lay is already at work on a new script that she hopes to submit to next year's CineMart, about an ordinary man who stumbles upon a smuggling plot when he takes a dead iguana home for his dinner.
More about My Daughter here.