[Movie Review] Anthony Chen’s Distance 《再見，在也不見》

Award-winning Singapore film director and producer, Anthony Chen, is back with another intense new film.

Chen first found success with his debut feature film, Ilo Ilo (爸媽不在家) in 2013, exploring the relationship between a family and their stay-home house help from the Philippines. Chen won the prestigious Camera d’Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival with Ilo Ilo and also won the illustrious 50th Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film and Best New Director.

Distance (再見，在也不見), made its world premiere at the 2015 Golden Horse Film Festival in Taipei to a sold-out audience.

The film cast Taiwanese actor, Chen Bolin (陈柏霖) as the lead roles in three different stories exploring the relationship distances and dimensions in very different situations.

Trailer:

Synopsis:

A conflicted manager on a business trip is intrigued by an elderly worker and investigates his life.

A young father receives a letter that brings him to a foreign land, where old emotions come unburied.

A visiting professor from overseas sets a student’s heart fluttering, while having to deal with his own.

Different characters, different relationships, the same humanity; stories about the distances between us and how we live with them.

The stories are set at comfortable paces, slow enough for emotions to seep in, but not too slow for viewers to fall asleep. Chen Bolin delivered stellar performances across three different roles. 

While it seems confusing at first to see the same actor in three continuous short stories, viewed from another perspective, it could be the same person living in three parallel universes, reacting differently to different situations.

As with Ilo Ilo, the director does not narrate the story outright for you, but leave much room for the audience to draw our own conclusions and piece our own narratives regarding the characters.

It leaves you to do a lot of thinking on your own after watching the film. Very enjoyable for me and I think the film is accessible to the masses.

Here’s an interview on our affiliated site, The Popping Post, with Anthony Chen and Chen Bolin when they were in Singapore to publicise the film. 

Distance is now showing in Singapore cinemas. Go catch it!

You do not have to support local filmmakers just for the sake of doing so. Go watch Distance because it is truly a remarkable film produced by a filmmaker who happened to be Singaporean. 🙂