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Red Kebaya (The)
R0 - Australia - Accent Review written by and copyright: Josh Cleary & Noor Razzak (25th January 2009). |
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The Film
 First let it be known that this is not your typical Hollywood movie, and thank God for that. Malaysian cinema it would seem is definitely worth exploring, even if it only throws up little gems like this once in a while. This is a story about a man and what makes him who he is. A photographer (Ramli Hassan), orphaned from early childhood, decides to take a series of pictures of derelict houses. As a successful photographer, he is luckily able to pay for his own costs during the project. As he has no sponsors or supporters, his agent is the only contact with the real world that he maintains during his cross-country trip. He travels north into parts of the country he has never seen before- or has he? One of the photographer's subject houses triggers a series of flashbacks. These become more and more in depth as he accepts their presence. Most of the film is taken up by these flashbacks. As he unlocks a childhood of repressed memories from decades ago, his past life is laid out for us on-screen. The ghost-like children that flit through scenes to lead flashbacks are a nice device and work in well with the disembodied voices he periodically hears. His journey through the house and grounds is well timed and feels natural. Not all of the memories are ones that his childhood self were privy to but the story would have been a little disjointed without them. For this reason they are a largely acceptable error, if indeed an error at all. The whole movie feels a made-for-TV/arthouse hybrid. Scenes and themes are very intimate and invite you to personally experience another life in a beautiful way, bringing an arthouse feel and perhaps alter your expectations from the start. For the most part the colours are very realistically beautiful but the focus is very direct, like TV, always on what you need to see. There's no overly artistic camera moves and no experimental lighting setups. It presents the story for itself and doesn't try to dress it up. Similarly, the writing is mostly quite functional. Some of the dialogue comes off as a wee bit hammy and over exaggerated. It smacks of excessive emotional writing, however in its defense, this seems to fit the events and the time period. As with a lot of Asian films that have European actors the white cast come off as a little self conscious. Bizarrely in some parts it seems that Bob Mercer (playing John Reynolds) is more comfortable speaking Malay than English! The actors fluency and comfort in Malay makes for some very tender moments. Some of the characters are a little wooden but even the most one dimensional show a little depth as they move towards the conclusion of the story. The wife (played by Samantha Schubert) is just a little too harpy and abrasive for my liking. She seems to be more of a plot device than a fully fleshed out character. In saying that, even if her sole part in the movie is as the catty, bitchy plot device, she plays her part with remarkable success. The soundscape is very well put together, aptly bringing a sense of solitude in the flashbacks. There are some beautifully written scores and well chosen songs. The dialogue is always clear and understandable, and the subtitles are concise and timely- while some may see this as simply expected, it is a relatively hard thing to do in a mixed language film and deserves noting. It is good to see that the grand cinematic tradition of product placement has not passed Malaysia by, with Canon and Apple standing front and center as principal sponsors. All in all this movie is a quiet gem that finds a delicate balance between tragedy and joy. Its message is warm, fuzzy and fulfilling- discovering who we are is more important than empty success. It is definitely a film to find and enjoy on a quiet evening by yourself or with people you care about. I only pray that Hollywood never finds this to make a terrible time traveling action movie out of it.
Video
The film is presented in its original theatrical ratio of 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, overall the image is rather excellent for a low budget indy film, I was pleased to see that the colours are rich and lush especially the greens of the trees and deep reds that populate the colour palette, skin tones tend to vere towards orange at times which was the only real problem that I noticed from this image, but blacks are solid. There's little grain and sharpness is excellent.
Audio
A single track is included in English/Malaysian Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. The sound is solid, with clear and distortion free dialogue, whenever Malaysian dialogue is spoken the film includes forced subtitles in English. Ambient sound is put to good use in the surrounds, environmental sounds add to the depth and the film's score also comes across well throughout the sound space. It's not a totally impressive mind blowing sound track but it suits the film and works well.
Extras
Accent has released this film with a series of soundtrack selections, some production stills, the film's theatrical trailer and some bonus trailers. Below is a closer look at these supplements. First up are a series of 4 soundtrack selections, these are audio only clips that feature the complete songs from the soundtrack, you can listen to these individually or with a 'play all' option and include: - "Joget Selendang Sayang" which runs for 3 minutes 35 seconds. - "Mengharap Sinar Kasih" which runs for 3 minutes 16 seconds. - "Red Kebaya Cha Cha" which runs for 2 minutes 40 seconds. - "Mengintai Impian" which runs for 3 minutes 57 seconds. There are production stills and feature a series of photographs taken from the filming and cut into a reel that runs for 5 minutes 52 seconds. There's also the film's original theatrical trailer which runs for 2 minutes 1 seconds. Finally the disc features a series of bonus trailers for: - "Sunrise" which runs for 1 minute 47 seconds. - "Fritz Lang's M" which runs for 2 minutes 15 seconds. - "Invisible Waves" which runs for 2 minutes 31 seconds. - "A Heart in Winter" which runs for 1 minute 42 seconds.
Overall
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