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[eaststar]

I'd been invited to the premiere of a locally produced movie Home Song Stories tonight. I didn't know much about the movie except that it starred Joan Chen and Qi Yuwu, a hot China-born actor who had launched his career on Singapore TV shows. I went because a client had invited me and the reviews had been pretty good. I'd invited Mark Zee and arranged to meet at the cinema at Great World City at 645pm. Daniel Yun the CEO of Raintree Pictures who made the film was there too, but unfortunately the gorgeous Qi Yuwu was not in sight.



Mark was late so I went in first, and he arrived about 10 minutes later, having had problems finding a cab, an all too common plaque in Singapore today. The movie was slow in starting and rather bleak, especially as it was set in Melbourne Australia in the early 1970s. But the story and characters soon became more interesting and as the story played out, we were engrossed. The movie is based on a true story and Joan Chen plays the central character, a highly strung beauty from HK who arrives in Melbourne with two kids in tow to marry an Australian sailor. She soon abandons him and moves from man before settling with Qi Yuwu, who plays an illegal immigrant. Down on her luck, she struggles to fulfill her own desires and dreams while looking after her children, and isn't helped by her self-pity and desperate need for a man. The story gets harrowing at times as she careens from broken affair to suicide attempts, especially as the story is told through the eyes of her 11 year old son, brilliantly portrayed by Australian-Chinese child actor Joel Lok. It was amazing to learn that the story is in fact true, based on the film's writer/director Tony Ayres' life with his mother.

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After the movie we had dinner at Coffee Bean, and then tried to get a cab. It was yet another exercise in frustration and aggravation - the cab line was long and no cabs were even coming into the mall. We tried calling for them but just kept getting a recording that said no cabs were available. My handphone battery was almost dead and it would have been a real pain if I'd not been with Mark and the battery finally went. In the end, we managed to get cabs through the phone line but it was really an ordeal.