With a soft ray of sunlight illuminating her face, Chang’s longing gaze holds the camera and our breath, telling us a thousand words in silence. Sylvia Chang’s performance as an older Yun Ling is equally riveting if not more. Lee’s delivery of Yun Ling’s conflicting emotions and her defiant look of perseverance first captivate our attention, then submerge us in her pain. He draws an acute observation of human frailty and magnifies Yun Ling’s guilt for leaving her sister in the camp and for falling in love with a Japanese. The two fall in love despite the physical and mental scars from the war, but Aritomo disappears one day without bidding farewell. The on-screen chemistry between Lee and Abe is dynamic and intricate: a headstrong Yun Ling with immense hatred for the Japanese encounters Aritomo, who introduces her to Japanese arts like gardening and body tattoos and at times offers an opposing worldview. Aritomo refuses to work on Yun Ling’s garden, but says she could stay and learn instead.Īritomo is set to be a man in his 50s in the novel, but Abe (also in his 50s) comes off as a younger and more attractive counterpart. She travels to Cameron Highlands to see the Japanese gardener, Aritomo Nakamura (Hiroshi Abe), who used to work at the imperial palace. After many failed attempts, Yun Ling gives up her search and sets out to build a Japanese garden for her sister, something she had promised during the war. An internment camp survivor, Yun Ling (Angelica Lee) works at the war crimes tribunal after World War II while searching for the camp where her sister Teoh Yun Hong (Serene Lim) was buried alive. We’re then taken on a journey through Yun Ling’s memories in the 1950s.
0 kommentar(er)
