That Girl in Pinafore

I went to watch this movie after the obviously liberal use of the tag of 'best Singapore movie'. (I'm Singaporean btw.) There is very little to mitigate for the fact that this is a low grade community theater production masquerading as a movie.

The storyline is predictable, stitched together from any number of Taiwanese movies of the same genre. The writing one-dimensional, either looking for cheap laughs or milking obvious saccharine moments. The cast has some chemistry though one of the two leads should have been easy on the eye at the very least. You can't feel for the so-called doomed lovers.

How anyone can say this is a good Singaporean production, let alone 'the best' is beyond me? A better candidate would be ILO ILO.

That girl in a pinafore IS that blah.

This is the best local movie I've ever watched and it exposed me to an aspect of Singapore's culture that I previously wasn't aware of - xinyao music! That Girl in Pinafore is a coming-of-age film, set against the backdrop of 1990s Singapore and featuring the local music from that era, xinyao. A group of boys and girls are drawn together by circumstances and their love for music. Together, they help to revive the xinyao club run by Jiangming's family. Romance blossoms between Jiangming and May, but her mother opposes their being together (as Jiangming did not even make it into junior college) and wants May to further her studies in America. Although they remain true to each other, there is an twist at the end which catches the viewer off-guard.

I loved all the songs; their description of life in Singapore resonated with me. The cast was talented, giving true-to-life performances and handling the song numbers well. The different elements of the 1990s depicted in the movie brought on a wave of nostalgia - pagers, the boys' porn magazine business, taking phone calls from the opposite sex without your parents noticing. The things that continue to this day and make Singapore unique gave me a deeper appreciation of or culture - Singlish, parental perspectives on academics and dating, date activities. The plot has a few flaws, but avoids the exaggerations and one-sided characterisation that plague Jack Neo's movies. Overall, a great story set in 1990s Singapore with lovely music numbers and solid acting.

Comparisons with Taiwan's own smash hit 'You're the Apple of My Eye' are inevitable, but to dismiss this movie as a slavish copy of the other is a gross injustice. After all, even before last year, such chronicles of the growing pains and puppy loves of local teenagers were already captured on film thanks to 'The Teenage Textbook Movie'. Chai's film is however also much more than just an update of that earlier movie for a different generation; rather it also pays tribute to an era of local music that has sadly gone out of fashion - and we're referring here to the 'xinyao' movement, which saw its heydays in the 1990s with well- known household names such as Liang Wern Fook and Billy Koh.

It's an absolutely winsome combination - that of teenage romance and 'xinyao' - with one complimenting the other in significance and ultimately poignancy. The most heartfelt type of romances have somehow always found their expression in song, and Chai - who co-writes the script with Violet Lai - has crafted a tender love story to give new meaning to the 'xinyao' tunes of yesteryears - including '细水长流', '黎明 的心' and '麻雀衔竹枝'. No less than Liang has contributed to their new arrangements, and whether amping some to rock-n-roll or simplifying others to just guitar, the songs perfectly mirror the mood of the film at different points no matter in rapture, wistfulness or sorrow.

That in a nutshell describes the narrative arc of the film, which begins in cheerful insouciance as lead protagonist Jia Ming (Project Superstar winner Daren Tan) and his group of three closely knit friends - Hao Ban (Kenny Khoo), Cao Gen (Seah Jia Qing) and Xiao Pang (Kelvin Mun) - make acquaintance with May (Julie Tan) and her two friends Jayley and Hayley (Jayley and Hayley Woo respectively). Jia Ming is enamoured with Julie from the start, but Hao Ban and Cao Gen only start cosying up to Jayley and Hayley after the three girls agree to help Jia Ming and his friends revive the former's struggling music café business.

The fairly standard boy-meets-girl routine gets a surprisingly earnest treatment by being rooted in a strong sense of time and place. The year is 1993, the heydays of the 'xinyao' revolution, where cafes like Jia Ming's parents' 'Dream Boat' were a dime a-dozen and 'xinyao' competitions were the rage. And yet a good education was still first and foremost in the minds of most parents, be it Hao Ban's working-class 'cha kway teow' stall parents, or May's well-to-do single mother, with lines being drawn by arrogant kids like James between the ones in JC and the ones who could not make it.

The latter is also the reason why Jia Ming isn't in the same school as his other three friends, and spends his days instead helping out with the family business. Yes, the hard truth is that academics matter very much where you end up in life, and the film finds deep relevance in its setting and context by portraying keenly the attitudes, norms and fads of a distinctly 90s cultural and social environment.

Through music and lyrics, Jia Ming and May's mutual attraction takes shape. Ditto for their attempt to revive 'Dream Boat' - well, at least at the start. On the first night of the boys' makeover from 'bo chap' open mic singers to chic rock-star wannabes, May succumbs to the condition of her weak heart and is rushed to hospital, precipitating a meeting of two worlds - one, her social world where Jia Ming and his group of friends belong; and two, her home background where her single mother is trying too hard to secure the future she wants for May and removing any obstacles (including the wrong company) along the way.

At the halfway mark, what began as an upbeat celebration of the carefreeness of youth takes a decidedly melodramatic turn, and here is where we suspect some will criticise it for being heavy-handed. To be sure, Chai does succumb to the overdramatic as May's mother takes draconian steps (including locking her inside her room) to thwart her relationship with Jia Ming - yet in parts where restraint might have served it better, the sincere performances from Daren and Julie keep the movie afloat, as well as their audience emotionally invested in a happily-ever-after.

Alas only the idealistic are likely to hold on to that hope as the beat gets more melancholic and the mood more circumspect; but Chai ultimately brings a beautifully bittersweet closure to the proceedings with an arch coda set 18 years later in present time. The reason for such a time jump isn't immediately clear, but when revealed, is surprisingly elegant and meaningful, conveying an evocative point about how teenage memories are never quite forgotten even if don't always surface in our everyday consciousness. What's also clear is how this must have been a personal tale for Chai, the feelings of wistfulness quite likely his very own looking back at his teenage years, a similar sentiment that he knows many young and middle-aged adults share.

And so even though its teenage coming-of-age romance isn't anything new, the fact that it is so rooted in a uniquely Singaporean context makes it all the more special and moving. Chai captures the details of the Singaporean teenager so attentively, evoking memories and feelings we are sure many will be able to identify with or reminisce about. Of course, the fact that it boasts some lovely 'xinyao' tunes only makes the whole experience all the sweeter and touching. Yes, we admit we are very much biased here, but there is something indescribably charming and delightful about the chord it struck in our hearts - and we dare say this will be our favourite local film this year.