In ‘Wet Season’, director Anthony Chen tells the story of a lonely housewife (Yann Yann Yeo) who forms an unlikely friendship with one of her wide-eyed students (Koh Jia Ler). Sam Care’s unobtrusive camerawork brings us into their lives as quiet observers, and the slow pace allows the inevitably scandalous events to unfold gradually. The film is at its best as a tender lens on the daily misogynies women have to suffer in a cutting, hierarchical society. Careful attention paid to the ailing father’s character (an affecting performance by Yang Shi Bin) also underline how much maternal caregiving operates even outside the traditional mother-child dynamic. Ultimately though, the heavy-rain symbolism and overt parallels drawn to underline similarities between a woman stuck in a loveless marriage and a boy with absent parents end up feeling pat and predictable.
Genre: Drama
Language: Hokkein/Mandarin/English
Runtime: 1h 43min
Year of release: 2019
Streaming Platform: N/A
Hot take is a series in which I offer my first impressions of films from India and around the world.
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