Gone Case

The phrase “gone case” is something you might find in one of those lists of Things Singaporeans Say. Sure, others may understand it and even use it to describe something or someone who is hopeless, but it still seems to be quintessentially local.
And so it is with this two-part small-screen adaptation of Dave Chua’s award-winning 1997 novel of the same name.
Part 1 is available via MediaCorp’s Catch-Up TV service and Part 2 airs on Channel 5 on Sunday at 10pm.
The protagonist of the story is 12-year-old Yong (Lim Chu Yeang). He is an ordinary boy living in an HDB estate in 1996 and his best friend, Liang (Chen Jing Jun), lives nearby.
It is a year of changes and upheavals as his grandmother dies, a gangster menaces the neighbourhood, money troubles dog his father (Zheng Geping) and mother (Yvonne Lim), and friendship is tested. Through it all, the PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examination) hangs over him like a dark cloud.
It sounds like melodrama territory but Chua’s treatment and director Ler Jiyuan’s take is anything but. Ler, who has worked on TV dramas such as The Pupil and Code Of Law, takes a subtle and quietly observant approach that refreshingly steers clear of histrionics.
Yong is, after all, not your usual, heroic protagonist. He is mild-mannered and kind of passive and is still carrying some baby fat. He is at that awkward age where he sees and understands more than adults give him credit for, and yet, he is often powerless to change things.
Chu Yeang, who had played the titular schoolboy in The Diary Of Amos Lee on okto, is well-cast as Yong and you root for him to make it through a turbulent year.
From a violent gangster to the less mature and mercurial Liang, there are stronger contenders for the label of gone case. The drama is also nicely anchored in a specific time and place with the use of a few choice period details such as a pager and a rectangular housephone.
Notably, Gone Case is not afraid to venture into some dark places. For example, in a fit of frustration over his squabbling parents, he ends up hitting his younger brother. Violence intrudes as well in the form of an older gangster with a nasty temper.
Then there are the screams in the neighbourhood which taunt and trouble Yong and make the world seem like a sinister place.
The reassuring voiceover narration by an adult Yong, though, suggests that he survives it all.
Not everything is explained and neatly tied up at the end and that is fine. Some mysteries are never solved, but that is life. The only thing certain about it is that it goes on.
(ST)