Ah Girl enjoyed its North American Premiere at the 51st Toronto International Film Festival.
TW: This review briefly mentions a scene of self-harm.
Pediatric study and common knowledge often state that childrens’ minds are “like sponges.” This fact couldn’t be made clearer than it is in Singaporean filmmaker Ang Geck Geck Priscilla’s feature debut, Ah Girl.
The movie culminates from several shortfilms Geck made dating back to 2012. I haven’t seen those shortfilms, and if you have, then consider yourselves fortunate to have a broader scope of understanding of her work. Otherwise, I’d say that Ah Girl is more than enough to inaugurate yourself with her work.
Geck directs from her own script for a story set in 1994, and centered on the trials and tribulations of seven-year old Eileen (Ong Xuan Jing), or Swee Swee as she prefers to be called. Her mother, Mummy (Carrie Wong) and father, Ah Pa (James Seah) are seperated, which ultimately sees both parents sharing split custody with Swee Swee and her boyish younger sister, Ah Tian (Sydney Wong) who is only four.
We watch as Swee Swee and Ah Tian toggle between custody periods with both parents, who seem moreso disinterested in being parents than tending to their own personal needs. It’s not long before Ah Pa finds himself a new mistress from Malaysia to bring home with their live-in grandmother, Ah Ma (Doreen Toh). When Swee Swee and Ah Tian aren’t there, they’re with their mother who is more concerned with finding a sugar daddy.
Things aren’t any easier at primary school where Swee Swee has just started attending. Apart from trying to woo her way into the heart of a boy in her school, she is also efforting to make money, albeit by commercially selling gum to other classmates, which is illegal in the country.
Swee Swee’s journey through girlhood is shown at breakneck pace, as she’s forced to think on her feet to try and understand the decisions adults make. These impasses mainly begin when Swee Swee and Ah Tian are asked by their mother who they’d like to stay with. Regardless of which parent, it’s clear that Swee Swee wants to stay together with her sister.
The subject is soon brought up again from Ah Pa in an underhanded moment that sees Swee Swee lashing out, calling all adults liars and cheaters. There are several more climatic moments that underscore some of the various themes Ah Girl explores, including when Swee Swee is taken by Ah Ma to get her hair cut against her will after getting in trouble in school.
The biggest boiling point occurs long after the moment Swee Swee dreaded the most, all amid dealing with her fractured home environment and having to see her parents swap between partners while still being married. The scene takes place at a party where Swee Swee steps on a group swing, while in one of her most visibly saddest states yet, deciding at one point to step her foot between the grass and platform of a group swing, causing self-injury; There are moments we see Swee Swee in her pensivity at times, seeing and observing things that frequently motivate her to make the choices she makes, which makes this particular turning point all the more heartbreaking.
One other thing that director Ang illustrates in Ah Girl isn’t as distinct, but worth considering as a tangential study of life from the perspectives of our protagonist’s mother and grandmother. There’s a generational focus here in the film’s message that I think is just as poignant as the moment we see Swee Swee holding a baby later in the film and giving the young newborn a solemn piece of advice that she herself had to discover on her own.
Shot in 4:3 format, Ah Girl brilliantly attributes documentary-style in its cinematography. Geck delivers the work of a seasoned filmmaker finally getting her chance to manifest a worldly and palatable vision of life and hardship as a child caught in the middle as she struggles to learn what she can amid circumstances she never chose, and cope with the inevitable growing pains and hardships in the process.
Ah Girl is an extraordinary coming-of-age drama from a nascent, otherwise adept filmmaker who brings clarity and poise in her work. Toplined with an amazing cast, and led by a young, award-winning star in the making, you’d be hard-pressed not to take something meaningful away from Geck’s heartfelt, emotional, and compelling debut.
Cast
Ong Xuan Jing, Sydney Wong, Doreen Toh, James Seah, Carrie Wong
Director and Writer
Ang Geck Geck Priscilla
Executive Producers
Ang Geck Geck Priscilla, Frank Smith, Wahyuni A. Hadi, Mr. and Mrs. Kee
Producers
Charlyn Ng, Wendy Lie Ang Geck Geck Priscilla
Editor
Hoping Chen
Additional Editor
Ian Alexander Ng
Director of Photography
Lim Teck Siang
Casting Director
Josclynne Kua
Music Composer
Kinn Leonn
Production company
Aggregate Films Pte Ltd, Kusu Films
International Sales
Aggregate Films Pte Ltd