That Girl In Pinafore
Chai Yee Wei
The story: The year is 1993 and music-loving Jiaming (Daren Tan) forms a band with his buddies. When he meets student-singer May (Julie Tan), love blossoms between them but they have to overcome various obstacles, including her disapproving mother. Xinyao (Singaporean folk music) is the soundtrack to their coming-of-age story.

The xinyao movement flowered here in the 1980s and early 1990s and it was a heady time for those who grew up in that era. These Mandarin songs were penned by Singaporeans and reflected the concerns, feelings and dreams of Singaporeans.
At its best, writer-director Chai Yee Wei’s film captures the joy and excitement of the music and the feeling that this was something we could call our own. It is clearly a departure from his previous works, which included the supernatural thriller Blood Ties (2009) and the horror-comedy compendium Twisted (2011).
It is all the more apparent that he has great affection for xinyao and that particular era. Loving attention is paid to period details, from posters of the voluptuous Hong Kong bombshell Amy Yip plastered on a schoolboy’s bedroom wall to a Jack Neo comedy skit airing on television.
Care has also gone into the staging of the musical numbers, including an amped-up rock version of the youthful anthem Heart Of Dawn performed at a music competition. He also works the songs into the plot where possible, to give the film the feel of a cohesive musical rather than a movie with a music track as an afterthought.
Xinyao fans will have fun spotting singers and songwriters from the folk music movement such as Roy Loi, Wu Jiaming, Pan Ying and Deng Shuxian as parents of the young protagonists.
While the film works as an homage to a bygone era, it falters story-wise. Its mix of pubescent sexual behaviour (Jiaming’s buddies get into trouble for renting porn magazines to their schoolmates) and innocent teenage romance is jarring.
Chai is unable to emulate how Taiwanese writer-director Giddens Ko deftly pulled off raging hormonal behaviour alongside chaste romance in You Are The Apple Of My Eye (2011).
More problematic is the melodramatic turn the film takes in the second half. One cliche after another rears its ugly head, from a hard and humourless parent to a terminal illness.
Rising star Julie Tan has natural charisma and Project SuperStar 2 (2007) champ Daren Tan tries his earnest best. But they are not helped by the material and the film runs out of steam towards the end.
Chai said he was inspired by the Taiwanese film The Golden Age (1977) and by paying homage to it, he has ended up with a period film that feels dated. It seems like a missed opportunity to really tell our own stories, when, after all, these are our own songs.
(ST)