BORI (PG)
105 minutes/HBO Go/ 3.5 stars
This gently moving story puts the spotlight on the title character, the 11-year-old girl played by Kim Ah-song. Bori is a coda - child of deaf adults - and is her family's lifeline in a hundred small ways, such as calling up restaurants for home delivery noodles and fried chicken.
Her hearing makes her useful, but excludes her from the intimate bond shared by her parents and younger brother, who is also deaf. She tries to break into their world in a disquieting but oddly charming manner.
Her antics are mostly a means by which writer-director Kim Jin-yu, who grew up with a deaf mother, depicts what life is like for a family whose members have disabilities in a small, tightly-knit community. His poignant portrayal of that life, which snagged him the Best Director award at the Busan International Film Festival, makes a case for how people with disabilities are everywhere, but only if the able-bodied choose to see.
FOR THE RECORD
The Asian Film Archive's Oldham Theatre, along with cinemas in Singapore, closed its doors in March as part of the help stop the spread of the coronavirus. It marked its re-opening with For the Record, a documentary programme that puts a spotlight on musicians in Asia blending traditional sounds with Western styles, often meeting with resistance from gatekeepers.
Screening at 4pm on Aug 22 are the double bill of Hanoi Eclipse: The Music Of Dai Lam Linh (2010, PG13, 56 minutes) and Make A Silence: Musical Dialogues In Asia (2019, PG, 29 minutes).
Make A Silence will screen first. The short film documents the groundbreaking 2018 Hanoi New Music Festival, which brought pioneering musicians from the region to the Vietnamese city.
Hanoi Eclipse follows avant-garde band Dai Lam Linh, known for explicit lyrics and a sound that a music journal has described as "traditional Vietnamese idioms mixed with screaming and growling female vocals, African percussion, piano, electric guitar and traditional zither".
WHERE: Oldham Theatre, 1 Canning Rise
WHEN: Till Aug 23
ADMISSION: $10
INFO: asianfilmarchive.org
2GETHER THE SERIES
Netflix, GMMTV channel on YouTube /3.5 stars
When this show aired in Thailand earlier this year, it turned leads Win Metawin Opasiamkajorn and Bright Vachirawit Chivaaree into stars. They graced magazine covers, appeared on variety shows and endorsed everything from skincare products to snacks.
Striking while they are red hot, the five-episode sequel Still 2gether premiered in Thailand and on production house GMMTV's YouTube channel on Aug 14.
Meanwhile, the original series - based on the 2019 novel of the same name by JittiRain - has been picked up by Netflix, introducing it to a wider audience.
To ward off the unwanted attentions of another male college student, Tine (Win) decides to get the coolly aloof guitar player Sarawat (Bright) to be his pretend boyfriend. After an initial show of reluctance, Sarawat agrees. As far as premises go, the "will you be my fake boyfriend" one is not particularly original.
But thanks to the cast, 2gether works.
Tine is chirpy and somewhat clueless in the romance department, despite his previous string of girlfriends, and rookie actor Win brings charm and energy to the role.
