A Malaysian Movie: Sepet

I had the opportunity to catch up with some of the recent offerings of Malaysian movies on ASTRO during the recent Raya festivities. I finally watched the award-winning love story, Sepet and Gol & Gincu but missed out on Puteri Gunung Ledang. Damn!

I was very eager to catch Sepet as I've heard rave reviews about it. However, I was kinda disappointed in the end. The story was very fragmented and I was left confused more than once. I was most confused with the ending! What really happened? Can someone seriously explain what transpired at the end of the movie? How did Jason/Ah Loong die? I know he died in a road accident but what caused it? Listening to the phone call while riding the bike? Riding the bike like a mad man? Too heartbroken about the situation? Relieved that Orked has finally called? Who was Orked talking to on the phone - Jason or his spirit? Did the accident happen before or after the conversation? So many questions and probabilities and interpretations!!! Maybe I'm just too dumb to understand. :P

It was a very typical Malaysian production with some very amateurish performances (especially the Chinese girlfriend). The colours were so washed-out as is in all Malaysian productions and so was the audio quality. There's just no depth with the vocals and a lot of the words were inaudible although I've turned up the volume right from the start. They should take some speech classes or at least learn to speak clearly.

Music (or at least basic background sounds) enhances the movie watching experience quite a bit but unfortunately, this movie had a lot of those 'quiet' moments where you suddenly feel as if you were standing in the middle of a very big hall that was so silent you could hear a pin drop. It's a feeling that your ears are blocked by something suddenly or just wondering if the audio in the movie has gone bad or something. I've seen some interesting photos at the website but couldn't remember watching it in the movie. Did they edit it out? It's truly a waste though especially the part where the mother is being consoled by Jason, the opposite of what we saw close to the end of the movie.

Anyway, it was still quite a good movie with some humour sprinkled all over the movie but you have to be a Malaysian to truly understand and catch all the antics in the movie. It's truly a waste that the movie was not filmed at more locations to showcase to the world how beautiful Perak, specifically and Malaysia, generally can be. Would I still recommend this movie? Yes, of course although not as highly as before. If my previous impression on the movie was an 8 or 9, it's now down to a 5 or 6. I've to admit it's very much down to my high expectations of the movie, though. :P