Like many Singaporeans, I suffer from acute self-deprication syndrome, stamped on our souls through years of observing other Singaporeans’ pain at the gulf between our cultural aspirations and more popular western media.
This completely cripples us from enjoying our own country’s efforts. From the Esplanade (’Eeee, durian’) to local music (’Sounds so amateurish’), Singaporeans have all but rained on our own parades when really, if the Esplanade belonged to another country, Singaporeans would flock there and take many pictures with it in the background, holding V signs up.
And thus concludes my disclaimer. Because this isn’t about local creativity. This is about our latest movie, The Leap Years.
I went to watch it partially out of a desire to support the local scene, but also because the trailer impressed me. Sure, the song in the trailer seemed remarkably like a rip off of Sakamoto’s theme from Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, but I was hoping for better from the film.
The movie is, in general, a two-hour tourism video for Singapore—readied for foreign consumption but perhaps not quite our own.
For one, most of the location is set in photogenic spots such as the Singapore river and Club Street, littered with little shophouses. The protagonist, too, lives in a typical old-style Peranakan house—sure, where else would she live in our tropical melting pot of an island?
And then you have the friends: three girls surrounding the female protagonist, all young, good-looking, successful and funny, all of whom exist just to wish her well into an unlikely romance with a Sex and the City flourish.
It is a romantic premise. Woman meets man on February the 29th. They make a pact to meet every leap year, and do so for a palpitating, heart-tugging 12 years.
There’s only one logical problem what that. Long as their ‘courtship’ was, delayed as their marriage was, meeting every leap year for 12 years means they only met four times.
It is a romantic notion, knowing they held each other’s attention in spite, but really, they essentially got married after four dates (technically two, because one was bust and the final one was where they decided not to wait another four years.)
And no, I didn’t spoil it for you by revealing the happy ending. The film does that already before starting the love story by flashing forward to their married lives some 20 years later. Surprise!
At times, the story does veer toward the new. Topics like divorce come up. And one of the supporting actresses says she’s gay. Gasp! Controversy! Touchy topics! (They mention the girlfriend’s partner but never show her…Too bad. We aren’t ready for tangible gayness quite yet.)
Even more ironic was the film’s overuse of Corrinne May in its soundtrack. I honestly like her music, but who better to embody the film than someone who had to leave Singapore and market herself in the U.S. before she would be embraced back home?
At its heart, the film gives you the distinct discomfort similar to how you feel when you overhear someone schlepping on a fake American twang when speaking to a foreigner. And it doesn’t matter if the latter is from the U.S. in the first place—the speaker is convinced the accent will fool anyone.
Much like this movie is.
