Love Cuts

Gerald Lee

The story: Sissy (Zoe Tay) is a cheerful seamstress, a loving wife to her husband Wai Mun (Kenny Ho) and a caring mother to their two children. Things seem perfect until she discovers a lump in her left breast. As fate would have it, she later strikes up a friendship with Kristy (Christy Yow), a sexy model facing a crossroad of her own.

There is just something about Sissy. Her friends, fellow shopkeepers and customers adore her, she has a loving relationship with her restaurant manager husband and her daughter looks up to her. The son is a little prickly, but then again, he is going through a teenage phase.

And why should they not love her? She is a skilled seamstress who will take on last-minute jobs for desperate clients and also sew on the ripped-off shirt pocket of a little schoolboy standing forlornly at her shopfront. She buys food for everyone within a 500m radius on her way to work and has a kind word for everyone.

The woman is practically a saint. And that is a problem.

She is clearly being set up for some tragedy to befall her and when illness strikes, it threatens to turn into a “why do bad things happen to good people” melodrama.

It is also difficult to identify with someone so unwaveringly admirable. Aside from one episode in which she has a brief emotional breakdown, Sissy bears her cancer stoically and even offers a helping hand to Kristy (a distractingly dubbed- over Christy Yow), who just happens to moodily wander into her store.

This is MediaCorp actress Zoe Tay’s second turn on celluloid after the drama mystery The Tree (2001) but it is unlikely to help her break out on the big screen.

True, she manages to bring some down-to-earth likeability to a character who is in danger of being too good to be true. She also goes the deglamorising route by shaving her eyebrows and wearing a skullcap but there is only so much she can do given the restrictions of the role.

Despite the potential for emotional and heart-tugging scenes given the subject matter, the film often feels flat and draggy. The bigger sin, though, is the three endings one has to sit through since director Gerald Lee had no idea how to conclude the movie.

There is no doubting that the script by former deejay Danny Yeo and playwright Lee Shyh Jih is well-meaning. There is even an earnest little scene of Sissy giving a discount to a foreign worker after telling him she appreciates the hard work he does. It is nice to see that those who often get short shrift in our society getting a little screen time.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the movies, nice and earnest just do not cut it.

(ST)