Cinema: Rice Rhapsody

I squirmed all through it. If not for being advertised (by myself mostly, to some regret) as some kind of landmark in Singapore's gay history (land ditch, actually, as you will see below), it's not worth seeing.

The gist of the story can be seen in the box on the right and from the article in the Hong Kong Standard Two gay men and a maybe. The problem is, the maybe remained a maybe right through to the end. Some might think the third son turned out to be gay after all - the fortune teller said it, and the boy moped after losing his best friend - but I thought the film never satisfactorily resolved it.

It's not that all questions must be fully resolved in all films, but this genre of a light-hearted tale meant as comfort food does need a proper resolution to its central question.

Did the funding agency, the Singapore Film Commission, demand that it be left vague?

That the SFC made demands was all too obvious. The showcasing of Singapore's urbanscape, the squirm-till-I-could-puke promotion of Singapore food, cheapened the production.

It was poor enough to start with. Many scenes distracted from the story rather than added to it. Take the main character Jen's chicken rice restaurant. One moment it looked like a 5-star establishment, complete with table-cloth and starched napkins, the next moment, it had plain marble tables like our kopi-tiams. Jen's restaurant was, from some scenes, a cut above Kim Chui's, but her kitchen was as much a hovel as his. 

Another distraction was the bit about eldest son Daniel getting into a gay marriage in Taiwan, and then calling it off. The character of Daniel was hardly developed, the boyfriend made just 2 or 3 appearances, but anyway the story was going on just fine without much of these two. Out of the blue, there was to be a gay wedding. My head sort of spun, like, where did this come from? The gay wedding thing was completely unnecessary to the plot. It was such an overreach that it instantly made the film a hard-sell for "gay rights" rather than a warm family tale.

The third distraction that grated on me was the scene where Jen had a dispute about how much to pay the fortune-teller, followed by the chase. It was so unnecessary. Moreover, the Indian woman chasing after her customer was too far out to be anything but absurd.

My fourth gripe would be the scene in Leo's school where he was beaten up (actually, the punch was so soft, it took me a few seconds after Leo fell to the ground to realise that, oh, it was supposed to be a fight). I mean, if the point of the latter scene was to establish the close relationship between Batman and Leo, a good dialogue moment would have served much better.

Dialogue - now that's another problem. It was stilted, and the totally random switching from Chinese to English and back was pointless. Indeed, Singaporeans often speak a mix of the two languages, but the mixture is woven within the same sentence, as in "but then, ni meiyou call ta, how do you know ta hui lai?", but the script had one character speaking a full sentence in English, followed by the other speaking a full sentence in Mandarin, then flipping to another sentence in English... 

No one speaks like that in Singapore. Instead of sounding true, it sounded fake.

The slightly paranormal character of Sabine was also strange. The purpose of her character could have been fulfilled by a well-meaning person with a fresh-outsider's take on the family's conflicts. She could have arrived normally and departed normally at the end of her exchange student program; there was no need to add a ghostly quality to that character. And because it was superfluous, it distracted some more.

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Singapore is trying all ways and means to boost tourism. When New Zealand got this phenomenal boost to tourism as a result of being the location for the Lords of the Rings trilogy, our civil servants decided that Singapore can use the same strategy.

In addition, building a film industry here adds to the services economy as Singapore gradually deindustrialises.

This, I am sure, explains the eagerness of the Singapore Film Commission to fund movies, even one with a strong gay element like this one.

But the problem is that the movie must first be a good one. Without an audience, who will see the celluloid Singapore and be interested in taking his next holiday here?

© Yawning Bread 

Two reviews

Rice Rhapsody
Directed by Kenneth Bi 
Reviewed by Charles Tan

Veteran Hong Kong actress, Sylvia Chang, is Jen, the protagonist in Rice Rhapsody, a mother's account of coming to terms with her sons' sexuality.

With two of her elder sons gay, and the youngest (of whom she is unsure); she cooks up a plot with her admirer & competitor, also a chef, Kim Chui (Martin Yan) to ensure that the third turns heterosexual by hosting a beautiful female French exchange program student, Sabine (Melanie Laurent) in her house.

Wacky as the plot sounds, it is however just what it is. An effort by an elder to "straighten" things out, regardless of what the younger generation feels.

Therein lies my contention with the movie. It fails to engage the audience on a much intellectual and emotional level for it is at best, trying to plant as many gags (some hilarious, others barely tolerable) as possible, to make it "entertaining".

Perhaps it may be the intention of the writer and director not to be overtly confrontational, yet, even trying to get a glimpse of Jen's emotions seems a problematic task as she seems to go on about her life cooking up a storm in the kitchen. There are just not enough scenes for us to empathize with; or even remotely show how alienated she is from her kids. There are hardly any conversations among her kids and her and when it does, borders on the courteous, conveniently neglecting the boys' emotional life and their partners. Unless of course, Kenneth is telling us Asian families prefer to brush aside the topic altogether.

While Rice Rhapsody may be a comedy, the stereotypical portrayal of gay characters comes at the expense of further mystifying the so-called "gay lifestyle". Jen's eldest son is a flight attendant which people believe most gays work as. Her second boy is so gay you can spot him a mile away. His birthday party appears to be attended by dancing queens who dresses in tights and talks with a lisp. The average Singaporean who watches Rice Rhapsody is likely to walk away, thinking this is how gays behave.

As a Singapore made movie, emphasizing on being locally made, it is ironical that the main actors are not Singaporean and look more like runaway models.

At times, it feels like a docu- video made by the tourist promotion board as it sells with outdoor location shots including Chinatown, Little India and Orchard Road; promoting Singapore as a food haven – which is the theme of the movie - revolving around Hainan Chicken Rice; and a cooking competition highlighting local delicacies. Sure, all these are uniquely Singaporean but they are secondary elements. Where is the dirt? Piled underneath the plastic looking buildings and happy shiny people?

Moreover, the lack of Singlish in the movie, replaced by hackneyed mix of English and Chinese, is an awkward attempt at "exporting it as an international commodity", as my friend who watched the movie with me, commented.

To someone who has never visited Singapore, Rice Rhapsody may come across as an exotic peek into "Little Asia" but unfortunately, it is a trifle too pretentious. The movie works, at best, a caricature portrayal of what we want others to perceive us as, not what we are.

The saving grace of Rice, is the convincing portrayal of Sylvia, as a mother fraught with inner turmoil, displayed however fleetingly only in two particular moving scenes - when she looked yearningly the grandkids of a family she is acquainted with; and screaming at her kids after her disapproval of the eldest son's marriage to his Caucasian boyfriend. Otherwise, the poor or almost non-existent acting of the other actors (cannot be entirely blamed on them since Sylvia hogs the limelight) barely needs mentioning.

One can read into the subtext of Rice Rhapsody by comparing the dominating mother, Jen, as the state; and her sons, as citizens, trying to break free from the restrictions imposed on them.

By using a socially controversial topic, mirroring it into an individual family which somehow doesn't seem able to confront on the issues, Rice Rhapsody, infers upon the dilemma faced by a precocious overbearing government.

The ending is predictable. A Hollywood ending to pacify conservative heartlanders and pseudo -liberal cosmopolitans.

Rice Rhapsody works at best, as a piece of commercial cinema, bland and offensive for being too polite and not in your face.

* * * * *

Rice Rhapsody (2004)
Reviewed by Ken Lee

Though director Kenneth Bi's Rice Rhapsody (2004) is of interest to those in this list primarily of its homosexuality theme (that troubled the Board of Film Censorship inasmuch as its month-long deliberation for the film's wide release in the city state in which the film is set and made), it explores at its core generational conflict; specifically, how a single parent's inability to adapt to modern circumstances leads to disillusionment and more misunderstanding. So it'd be misleading to categorise this as a "Gay" film, per se.

The plot is set in contemporary Singapore's Chinatown. Sylvia Chang, wonderful and enarmoured with supposed Singlish, plays a single mother (Jen) struggling with the uncertainty surrounding the sexual orientation of her third son, Leo (played by a certain delectable newcomer, Tan LePham), when his two elder siblings are both out and proud, much to her dismay, bringing issues of same-sex marriage and their boy-friends back to dinner table discussion. The lives of the family are going to be changed with the arrival of a French foreign exchange student, Sabine, played by a cooky Mélanie Laurent, who has a thing or two to show about finding common grounds, and knowing what's truly important in life.

The issue of homosexuality isn't a "modern" circumstance, of course. Its open acceptance (or tolerance) and embraced and head-on examination as an "idea", however, is, especially in this city-state notorious for its anti-gay "lifestyles" stance. So even if the movie isn't without its flaws, it's still a welcome addition to a growing list of movies purport to examine social, cultural and political aspects of the city-state, from "12 Storeys" to "Eating Air" to "Chicken Rice War".

Recommended.

Little known facts: Director Kenneth Bi is the son of Ivy Ling (Ling Bo) who is a mega star in Shaw's Huang Mei Diao era. She has a cameo appearance in this film.

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