Fikri Jermadi chews on the food for thought inspired by Wong Kai Qi’s latest film.

‘Cherish, Love’, the short film by Wong Kai Qi, is a film made to commemorate Mother’s Day, which was celebrated not too long ago. It tells the story of a mother (May Liew), whose adult children (Elynn Wong and Daren Ma) lives at home with her. Though their lives would amble on nicely, things become complicated when the mother is diagnosed with an illness, leading to changes in her and her family.

Given the occasion for which the film is made, ‘Cherish, Love’ clearly highlights the mother’s affection for her children, with much of this being expressed through the food she prepares for the family. In fact, this would be a major discourse throughout the film, as their cooking and consumption (or lack thereof) forms the backbone of the narrative.

For instance, in procuring the ingredients for dinner, the mother would make regular trips to the cleanest and brightest sundry shop I’ve ever seen. Here, she interacts with the shopkeeper (Vivien Wong) and her son (Dannis Wong) about family matters, with the latter two becoming stand-ins for the bigger picture society (which we don’t see much of in the film).

That keeps the focus on the micro family unit, and in particular, the food through which the discussion is being held. Cynthia Ong’s cinematography highlights this in different ways. For instance, in an early scene where she is cutting up the ingredients in the kitchen, there were several shots of her framed through the window grills. Though clearly designed as an aesthetically pleasing shot, it also offers the possibility of reading the mother as being imprisoned by the domesticity she has both been conditioned by and conditions her children with.

Dinner is later served for her children returning from work, a session which offers them one of the few opportunities of familial interaction. Here, the dishes prepared on the table is bathed with a hard overhead glow, making it seem more holy and ephemeral. This helps to anchor the food (object), dinner session (subject) and dining table (space) as the central piece of the narrative, making such scenes more important than it would have been otherwise.

In fact, most of the film’s important scenes would unfold in this location. Here is where the mother would share the doctor’s diagnosis with her children, and it is also here where tensions would arise between them (more on this later). Without necessarily giving away major spoilers, ‘Cherish, Love’ would also conclude in the kitchen, once again highlighting the centrality of food to this family.

It must be said that this is not an uncommon thing, as plenty of other films and filmmakers present the dinner session and location as the locus of family life. Off the top of my head, James Lee’s ‘Family Portrait’ considers an interesting interaction between a family through technology, while a more recent film, ‘Family Dinner’ by Lim Han Loong, also showcases the dinner scene as the nexus where familial power relations are negotiated.

We can even see this in Bebbra Mailin’s ‘Ninavau’, whose dinner scene (with a similar lighting set up to ‘Cherish, Love’) illustrates an important part of the main character’s identity, a key plot point in the film. As such, the intersection of food and family is not a new concept (especially in Asian contexts), and it’s interesting to see Kai Qi’s direction on these themes.

All the same, and still couched in the aforementioned Asian context, I do have an axe to grind against her children, whose lack of gratitude can be incredibly grating at times. “Why didn’t you wake me up? I’ve an important meeting!” wails the daughter, a working professional who should have a better sense of discipline (or, at the very least, not blaming her mother for it).

The son is even more annoying, reaching his peak/trough when he dismissed an important plot point as “not a big deal”. Additionally, the shopkeeper’s son was also quite disrespectful in discussing another person’s medical condition. Various voiceover sections also belie the positive stereotype of Asian societies being kind and caring.

Of course, such a didactic approach (as reflected in the film’s instructive nature) is meant to stir the viewer’s emotions, helping to create sympathy for the mother. That these feelings are sparked within me suggests that Kai Qi and her team has done an effective job on that front. Not that this is their first rodeo, with their previous effort, ‘Home’ (released for Chinese New Year a few months ago), adopting a similar theme.

Generally speaking, I’m not necessarily a fan of such direct and moralistic forms of storytelling, but it can’t be denied that there is an audience for such stories (‘Home’, for instance, got over 350,000 views at the time of writing, which is no mean feat). They tend to reside more in a longer-form drama or film, which in fact is the sort of narrative stylings ‘Cherish, Love’ strikes me with.

The structure makes itself known through the introduction scene, where the mother wakes up early in the morning, prepares breakfast for her children before waking them up for work. It’s the kind of A-to-Z storytelling you expect from a feature film or a television serial, which makes me wonder whether the story itself might have been better served in a longer-format.

In that context, it could also further explore the difference in how the mother treats the son and the daughter. The son seems to be given a more privileged position in the family, while the girl was admonished for wanting to do something similar to her older brother. I suspect that the masculine superstructure is not the main focus of ‘Cherish, Love’, but it remains an interesting branch of the narrative tree all the same.

Additionally, further room for improvement could be found in the editing, which at times lack the continual flow from one cut to the other. For instance, in an early scene, the shopkeeper moves towards the mother, but in the next shot she is already standing in front of her, a visual ellipsis which makes it difficult to suspend my disbelief.

Nonetheless, this remains a good effort from a relatively young filmmaker exploring their filmmaking chops. The rough edges are smoothed by a central narrative which, once again, is effective enough to make me want to figuratively smack some sense into the children. ‘Cherish, Love’ may hit home with their target audience, and at the end of the day, that is really what all storytellers want.

Featured image credit: ‘Cherish, Love’ by Wong Kai Qi