I just came back from a movie which received a rave review (according to its poster) entitled Karaoke. It is a Malaysian film which is being shown under a limited run, ending tomorrow. It is shown only in one cinema for one whole week. It has been shown under the GSC International screening category as it has been making rounds in Toronto International Film Festival and Cannes. As I am a sucker for film which is under the radar or what people will call cerebral movie or better yet, independent film, I was really keen to watch it.
Some of my favourite indie films are The Live of Others, The Piano and Priceless. A German movie, an Australian epic saga and a French film. They are as eclectic as they can be. I also love an unreleased film called Gadoh! ("Fight!"), which I did a review and you can access it here. I also love to death the melancholic Japanese movie entitled Departure that my wife and I have the CD for the movie and if we want to relax ourselves, we played the CD over and over.
I need to establish this as I just can't relate to the movie just now. There were too many empty spaces in the movie and although I got the message of a story about a boy who returned home to help his mother in her karaoke after he finished getting his college degree, it was a torture. They lived in a palm oil estate and the people there have to work hard to make a living. The place where they escape their everyday toil was trough the karaoke centre.
But why was there so many wasteful reels of unrelated panorama or even sheer act of nothingness.
The made especially for the movie soundtrack, in the form of karaoke songs, by Shanon Shah were good.
The people were first class actors.
But, I just don't get the film.
With all due respect to the newly discovered filmmaker, which the poster claimed as first rate.
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