“Love Conquers All” was the debut feature by Malaysia's female filmmaker and active part of Malaysia independent film scene, Tan Chui Mui who pens the script too. This poetic and fascinating film has won several awards such as the Swiss Oikocredit award at Fribourg, the Tiger award at Rotterdam International Film Festival and the New Current Award at Pusan International Film Festival.
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Blossoming young woman Ah Ping (Coral Ong Li Whei) has just moved to Kuala Lumpur from rural Penang. She lives at her aunt's home, sharing a room with little cousin Mei (Leong Jiun Jiun) and works at the family humble restaurant. Ah Ping has left behind a boyfriend who she phones regularly in her homesick moments, from a public phone (the film is set in the 90's, the last decade of low tech). And it is right at the public phones place when someone takes notice of her and starts following her in her evening strolls at the food stalls, the market or on her trips to the phones. It's John (Stephen Chua), a bold and self-confident young guy adorned by an aura of mysterious bad boy.
He flirts with Ah Ping, who at the beginning is cautious and coy but slowly surrenders to the insisting yet flattering courtship. The two soon start dating, John keeps calling Ah Ping “wife” and Ah Ping, in a childish way to regain control, keeps phoning her old boyfriend at home and talking to him in front of her new one. Her hesitation gradually melts away, they become more and more intimate and we see how Ah Ping enjoys their little game of husband-and-wife. One day though, John vanishes, and his cousin Gary (Ramanamohan) tells the distressed Ah Ping that he's taken hostage by bad guys and she needs to come up with a lump of money to save him. The slimy cousin also has a proposal she cannot refuse to earn that money. It all sounds scarily familiar to Ah Ping who had heard this very story before…
Tan Chui Mui has a special gift for visual storytelling, much of the story is in the hands of the images while the action is often off-screen and the dialogues are essential, albeit rather dense of significance. In her debut feature, she works on the subtle emotional changes her protagonist is going through, in that delicate and unrepeatable moment of discovering love and desire. However, the film is not as romantic and pink-tinted as the title suggests. In fact, that same title sentence is placed in a context that turns upside down completely its meaning, giving the second part of the film a rather different mood.
The writer/director seems to enjoy playing littles games with the audience (and with her own characters) planting halfway through, the clues to the plot that will follow. She uses the same trick in “Barbarian Invasion”, where the third act of the movie follows a script we have heard earlier. Here the effect is rather chilling though, not as playful as in BI. When John introduces his cousin to Ah Ping explaining his MO with his female prays, a dissonant note is introduced in the story, like a dark cloud in a sunny day, and when history repeats itself, we can only watch the inexorable happen. Fatalism? Weakness? Love? What is behind Ah Ping's reaction to the foreseeable crash? We are left pondering, but more than a simple cautionary tale, this is a delicate character study about a girl creating her own life story. Could have she just imagined following that script? Jumping into that fantasy as something that had to be done in order to gain a sort of personal identity?
Talking of identity, the opening scene is particularly impressive and effective. In a very long take, Ah Ping is on a bus and we immediately are thrown into the dramatic contest of displacement but also of a young woman writing her own future. Her eyes are closed but she is not sleeping. She is imagining the life that waits for her at her destination and savoring the taste of sorrow for what she left behind. An old Indian man in the next seat asks her to swap places as he got a migraine and would like some fresh air. The whole swapping takes few minutes as the man has lots of ramshackle bags. They are both on the same “boat”, moving across the country, clumsily carrying their feelings and belongings, searching for their place in a land where they were born but that doesn't give them an identity.
A sweet sub-plot sees Ah Ping's cousin Mei developing a secret “love affair” with a pen-pal she calls the “Mystery Man”. She checks her mailbox everyday and dreams of a romance like her big cousin Ah Ping or like the soap operas they watch all together with the mum. She forms a tender bond with Ah Ping that highlights how young and barely out of childhood Ah Ping herself still is. Part of the next generation Chinese, Mei is also very studious and has already surpassed her mum in the cultural field, as we see her struggling to help the daughter with homework. Unfortunately, Mei's plot is neither developed enough to be able to stand on its own feet, nor small enough not to obstruct the flow of the main one, mainly because creates expectations without following up.
The story is narrated with great realism in style, acting, photography and it is a veritable portrait of Malaysia's everyday life in that exact moment and more precisely of a Chinese family in Malaysia. Almost resembling a documentary at times, real life is displayed in the night markets selling cheap clothing, the street side 24-hours Indian restaurants “Mamak”, the bus rides, the street food stalls, the public phones and the corny romantic dramas on TV. The absence of music score plays a big part in achieving this realistic style, background noises (sometimes slightly overpowering) is all we get. The photography by frequent collaborator and fellow filmmaker James Lee, however, oozes a special beauty in its realism, especially when indulging in closeups on Ah Ping enigmatic and pensive expressions.
“Love Conquers All” is a confident debut feature, a tale of personal growth for Ah Ping and for Tan Chui Mui.
