I almost never cover any Malaysian films here and that is because even the best of them are rather mediocre by international standards. Still, my wife wanted to watch this while it was showing in local cinemas as a small show of support. Tan Chui Mui is one of the most internationally prominent Malaysian directors these days, and she even wrote and stars in it herself. For my part, this definitely counts as an eccentric arthouse film and I’m fairly confident that I understand what the director was going for. Yet I do not like it at all and consider it a personal vanity project that was never intended to have wide appeal.

Actress Moon Lee is broken up over her recent divorce and has to raise her very energetic young son Yu Zhou by herself. She brings him with her to meet Roger Woo, a director and her longtime collaborator. He is interested in casting her again for a new project but this time it is a martial arts action movie. To do this, he has her train in a dojo for month both to build up her muscles and to learn the proper skills. Meanwhile she struggles to keep Yu Zhou under control even as Woo tinkers with the script which will be about a skilled female spy who has amnesia, directly ripping off from The Bourne Identity. Moon’s training goes but then Woo tells her that his producers want him to cast Moon’s ex-husband and Yu Zhou’s father Julliard as the male lead. Moon puts her foot down at this change in plans and is prepared to walk away from the film despite the time and effort she has already put into her martial arts training. Just as she is leaving with Yu Zhou in tow, a car drives up and snatches him away, taking the film in a strange new direction.

This is many things in one: it’s a film about the making of an independent film; it’s a drama about a woman rebuilding her life after a divorce and struggling with her son; and on top of it all it really does also want to be a martial arts action movie with a kickass heroine lead. The unifying theme here isn’t any single one of these elements but in how they are all parts of the real life of Tan Chui Mui herself. It’s clearly meant to be semi-autobiographical and I interpret this as her way of reinventing herself after her divorce. That includes bulking up her muscles, learning martial arts and even achieving a measure of inner peace. It casually throws in small details like how she speaks so many of the languages of Southeast Asia, has a lifelong interest in championing the cause of refugees arriving on Malaysia’s shores, and of course is an all around cosmopolitan who freely flits between the many ethnic groups in Malaysia and most particularly is comfortable interacting with both Muslims and non-Muslims. That’s great for her but it means that the film is all about her and nothing else. It would have been more honest to make a straight biopic but then it would be the height of arrogance for a director to make a biopic all about himself or herself. Many of the individual themes present here could resonate with a general audience if expanded upon but taken together like this, it adds up to an idiosyncratic portrait of one particular person. It’s hard to understand who, apart from Tan herself and her immediate circle of family and friends, is meant to find this fascinating.

In terms of production quality, I’d judge this to be only middling. The team seems proud of their action scenes and they’re okay here but then the bar of cinematic action is really high these days and this isn’t even really trying. The acting isn’t great with the conversations between Moon and Woo being noticeably awkward. Some storytelling details are solid such as Moon drinking a glass of water while Woo drinks wine, suggesting that she is perhaps Muslim. But too much of it is made up of lazy tropes, such as the opening scene being Moon struggling with a suitcase with her son in tow. For one thing this shot is overused as a visual shorthand for a single mother and for another, it’s implausible that the suitcase is anywhere close to enough for the two of them and is not in keeping with an actress of her stature and means. Why also does Woo have an unnecessarily creepy director vibe? Last but not least, I detest the trope of wizened old masters being dispensers of pocket wisdom wherever they appear. This is really the worst way for any film to try to be spiritual or insightful and has the effect of making the film feel shallow instead of deep. In general the film feels lazy about getting every detail of the production just right and excuses its own imperfections by asserting that it’s a film within a film.

In a way, this film is a success in that it accomplishes exactly what its director set out to do. It serves as her personal statement on her post-divorce life. It’s quite amazing to me that she managed to get the funding and talk enough people into getting it made but more power to her I guess. I still maintain that I don’t know what anyone else is supposed to get out of it. I would be inclined to view it more kindly if it were actually well-crafted but it is not. If this is what passes for a good arthouse film by Malaysian standards, well, I’m glad I’ve skipped over most of them.