Torrential rain soaks director Anthony Chen’s “Wet Season” with a melancholic yearning for warmth. As water pours outside, the interpersonal storms of two solitary people also rage on. Though it s a facile metaphor, its desired effect mostly pays off.
For his new subdued drama, the Singaporean director reteams with Malaysian actress Yann Yann Yeo and local young star Koh Jia Ler. Chen’s 2013 debut “Ilo Ilo,” featured Yeo as a pregnant mother so overwhelmed with work that a Filipino housekeeper becomes the primary caretaker of her 10-year-old son (Jia Ler). Similar themes around substitute motherhood and the precocious minds of young males resurface in this follow-up but with added maturity.
Wet Season Movie Review
Strand Releasing
Grade: B+
Release Date: April 23, 2021
Abdominal injections, vaginal ultrasounds and artificial inseminations are all part of daily lives of women aged thirty-five-plus who want to conceive a child but are unable to.
Wet Season introduces us to one Ling, (Yeo Yann Yann), a Mandarin language teacher in a boys school in Singapore. Ling’s daily routine includes: administering daily injections of fertility drugs into her stomach, and giving elementary care to her disabled father-in-law (Yang Shi Bin), while having very little interaction with husband Andrew (Christopher Lee), who has given up on their eight-year old marriage and does not bother accompanying her to gynecological appointments. Her students seem polite but care little about studying Mandarin in a country, where English is the “lingua franca”, used in daily business transactions and sprinkled sporadically in personal conversations.
The Straits Times
PHOTO: GIRAFFE PICTURES
https://str.sg/JK76
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Film-maker Anthony Chen (right) has announced his next project: a drama set during the pandemic.