GOING THE EXTRA MILE: Bedlinen salesman Valentine Tan (played by Adrian Pang, right) even provides lip service to lonely tai tai and shopaholic Clara (left, played by Kym Ng). -- PHOTO: WEE LI LIN

GONE Shopping is an accessible chick flick with a quirky arthouse sensibility that gives it a little extra pizzazz.

It is also a promising debut for Singaporean film-maker Wee Li Lin, who has been a familiar fixture on the short film-making scene for the past decade.

Gone Shopping shares similarities with another recent Singapore film, Be With Me (2005). Like the latter, it is composed of a triptych of stories and one tale stands head and shoulders above the other two.

In the strongest story, Kym Ng plays lonely tai tai Clara, who seeks solace in shopping. Adrian Pang provides gallant support as Valentine Tan, Clara's one-time teenage crush- turned-bedlinen salesman.

Aaron (Aaron Kao) is a dissatisfied 20-something who spends his days loitering at malls instead of going to work. His anomie is broken by a liaison with Hui Hui (Magdelene Tan), a sexy Cosplay-obsessed girl.

The last tale focuses on a little girl, Renu (Sonya Nair), who is lost in the bowels of Mustafa Shopping Centre.

These stories feel familiar as Wee has tackled similar characters in short films like Holiday (2002), about a retrenched executive, and Homemaker (2002), about a rich housewife.

But Wee, who also wrote the script, finds thematic and visual linkages to the three tales which ensure that this coheres as a feature, not just a lengthy, random yoking together of three disparate filmlets.

It would have been easy to satirise the Singaporean obsession with shopping. But Wee burrows deeper into the Republic's love affair with consumer culture and unearths a couple of surprisingly moving insights into the nature of home and family.

As a director, she has a polished visual style with thoughtfully staged mise en scenes and some clever transitions.

She also has a knack for drawing performances from her cast.

Ng is a revelation here. Her Clara, who could have been a self-indulgent bore of a character, is beguilingly shy, naively yearning and sweetly forlorn.

Wee also coaxes a convincing delivery from six-year-old newcomer Nair.

Retail therapy has never been quite this entertainingly thoughtful.

sorfern@sph.com.sg