Woman on Fire Looks for Water

Malaysia

2009

99 Min

Color

Mandarin

Subtitled in English

Audio in Mandarin

Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
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CAST Ernest Chong, Chung Kok Keong, Foo Fei Ling, Jerrica Lai

MUSIC Isabel Lam

Rotterdam (Spectrum), San Francisco (World Cinema), BAFICI (Panorama)

Synopsis

Father and son wrestle with love in a small Malaysian fishing village. While father looks up an old lover he should have married years ago, his son faces a dilemma. Will he choose the girl he’s in love with, or the daughter of his boss?

The young Ah Fei lives in a small fishing village, where he catches and sells frogs. His bachelor father Ah Kau is a fisherman. The old man sees his death approaching and goes looking in a nearby village for a woman who was his great love, but whom he did not marry back then. His son is in love with a girl who only wants a relationship if he earns more. The son goes to work in a factory and faces a dilemma when his boss wants him to marry his daughter. While the father regrets the decision he took in his youth, his son looks as if he’s about to make the same mistake. Woo Ming Jin, one of the great Malaysian film talents at this moment, tells the story with beautiful images of an authentic fishing village, with an eye for local decay. —International Film Festival Rotterdam

Director

Woo Ming Jin

Born in 1976 in Malaysia, Woo Ming Jin’s work as a filmmaker and photographer has garnered him a reputation as one of East Asia’s most promising talent.
At 19, he went to the US to study business in a small school in Boston, then worked for a while, then decided to be a filmmaker. He always wanted to make films since he was around 16, but studied business because it was “acceptable.” I received a scholarship from San Diego State University to do an MA in film production. In 2003, he returned to Malaysia where he found many stories to tell, and started making films. He is drawn to the everyday layman world, the people living outside of the city, places that are untouched by time.

His films mostly focus on the interaction between human and nature. His first film Monday Morning Glory screened in Berlin and Locarno, while his second, The Elephant and the Sea, won awards in Torino, Seoul and Spain festivals. Woman on Fire Looks for Water, played at Venice and Rotterdam, among… read more