Talentime

(Malaysia, 2008, 110 mins, 35mm)

US Premiere

Producers: Ahmad Puad Onah, Effendy Harjoh
Writer: Ahmad
Cinematographer: Keong Low
Editor: Affandi Jamaludin
Music: Pete Teo
Cast: Mahesh Jugal Kishor, Pamela Chong Ven-teen, Mohammed Redzuan Adamshah, Jaclyn Victor

Amid the heady days of youth, three high school students gear up for a talent competition. While shuttling between home and school, they find their way from love to loss, and back again. Melur is the eldest daughter of a well-to-do English/Malaysian family. She sweetly sings her heart out and recites poignant poems over the breakfast table at home. Mahesh, a handsome and deaf Indian student with a motorbike, is assigned to chauffeur her to rehearsals. Hafiz is a guitar-strumming Malay student who dutifully tends to his dying mother while loving Melur from afar. The upcoming competition unravels the heightened emotions of the students and their families as they navigate heartache, tragedy and the fluctuating tempo of quotidian life. In her final film, the late director Yasmin Ahmad interweaves music and dialogue with humor and grace, as well as a touch of Yasujiro Ozu. The strains of Debussy imbues the empty school halls with longing, while some John Hughes-style montages make a fitting ode to awkward teenage angst. Never one to shy away from sensitive topics, Ahmad tackles the complex social and cultural dynamic of Malaysia through the films’ touching multicultural family portraits; her characters, both young and old, flit effortlessly between languages both spoken and unspoken, voicing the soundtrack of the young at heart. “A story full of joy and pain, hope and despair, and a host of beautifully written songs,” is how Ahmad described TALENTIME. One of the most acclaimed and original voices in Southeast Asian cinema, she passed away suddenly last July, aged just 51.

-- Ellen Park

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