The need's trap
L'Alternativa 2010
Festival de Cinema Independent de Barcelona
Woo Ming Jin is a young filmmaker born in Malaysia. He has studied cinema and television in San Diego, USA. His short career has already attracted attention to many film festivals around the world with films like Monday morning glory (2005), The elephant and the sea (2007) and The tiger factory (2010), his last film just after the one presented in the official section of L’Alternativa 2010 Festival de Cinema Independent de Barcelona.
Woman on fire looks for water (2009) shows marriage as an economic solution. Living together for love or for economic interest is the dilemma presented here by the different experiences lived by a father and his son, they both linked with the fishing business. While the young son is trapped between the beloved girl and a rich businessman daughter’s desires, the father sets out to look for the beloved woman he rejected a long ago just for the money. The film becomes a thriller for the audience because the son is falling down in the same mistake the father has been paying the whole life. Now, as an older man, he tries to rectify it but perhaps it’s too late.
The film goes from the rawness of their terrible working conditions to the precious nature that gives us images in intense green shades and skies full of nuances that seems to be a metaphor of the richness of our existence which we use to reject due to the fear of an inexistent future. Water is also important as a way of life and source of food, but also as a symbol of the feelings and interests flow. The river baths the green it has created with a lot of efforts.
Part of a very remarkable official section complemented by varied program of parallel sections and tributes to Alexander Kluge and José María Nunes, that film became a highlight in L’Alternativa thanks to a very personal touch. The film has also been presented in some important festivals such as the Rotterdam and San Francisco ones. We just call future to the mirror of our fears and we become trapped in and lose the green horizon of the present moment which is already past.
Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Photo by Woo Ming Jin courtesy of L'Alternativa