A film that seems like a throwback to earlier times not only in the subject matter but also in cinematography. This Malaysian/British co-production revisits the time of the Japanese occupation and the return of the Brits to control in the land.
The main character Yun Lin (Angelica Lee) is held in a concentration camp together with her sister. When the Japanese begin their retreat she is able to escape but her sister is killed when the Japanese bomb the mine they have herded most of the prisoners into. To honour her sister she decides to create a Japanese garden that her sister imagined in her mind.
She visits a Japanese man, Aritomo (Hiroshi Abe) who is working on a tea plantation owned by British but he is unwilling to accept her commission. Aritomo was a gardener at the imperial palace in Tokyo but for some reason lost his job and came to Malaysia a few years before. What he does suggest is that she work in his team and she will learn all that she needs to create the garden herself.
As she gets to know the strict and distant Japanese man better stories of the camp emerge and the torture she endured. Aritomo suggests she learn another subject apart from gardening and among those offered are origami and tattooing. He ends up covering her scars with a gorgeous Japanese style tattoo which contains hidden information.
There is a third timeframe here. Many years later (1980’s – 90’s) Yun Lin (now Sylvia Chang) returns as a judge seeking to be appointed to the federal court.
Rumours abound regarding her relationship with Aritomo and she returns to the plantation where Max (Julian Sands) is now in charge. Aritomo’s affairs have been left as is for decades and Yun Lin goes through his material to see if she can uncover any more evidence of his reason for being in Malaya. This allows Max and her to chat and reveal more of the story to the audience. In inscrutable Oriental style some mysteries are solved, others not so.
The film moves along at a languid pace best suited for the garden scenes. There are some brief shocking scenes in the camp and a lot of Yun Lin gazing at Aritomo. His teaching delivered in drip feed style has some wisdom but I wanted the end to come more quickly. It is not a bad film by Tom Lin from Taiwan but it lacks spark and originality. British period dramas usually have meaning hidden in the silences but this is not so much the case here. The acting is also rather wooden in parts. Kartik Vijay does a decent job behind the camera. While it is good to see a film from Malaysia and to revisit the Cameron Highlands which I have seen, this film doesn’t do it for me.
2 stars plus
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