You’ll really want to love Yasmin Ahmad’s final film – and you might. This one falls short of greatness but as a snapshot of the country, you don’t get much more Malaysian than this.
First, some minor spoilers lie ahead. These won’t affect your enjoyment of the movie, and in any case the final scene shall remain unspoiled.
Acclaimed Malaysian director Yasmin Ahmad is best known for her 2004 film Sepet. Comparisons between this and Talentime, her last feature film before her untimely death in 2009, will be inevitable. But while both films touch on some of the same subject matters, the end results are very different.
Sepet is a lot better than Talentime. This isn’t to say that everything Yasmin Ahmad does has to top her best work, just as it would be ridiculous to expect Francis Ford Coppola to top his first two Godfather movies. But it’s a shame because Talentime had the potential to work much better – if only the time was taken to flesh out the storylines and give them space to breathe.
Seriously, there are truckloads of drama in this. Set against the backdrop of a local school talentime competition, the story follows some of the show’s performers and all the various hardships they are facing. You have Mahesh, who has a disability, faces a personal tragedy early on in the story and later has to contend with cultural and religious differences when it comes to his falling for Melur.
You have Hafiz, a talented and hardworking student who has to shrug off the stigma of affirmative action while taking care of his ailing mother in the hospital. You have Kahoe, a jealous classmate who accuses Hafiz of cheating in exams because of his father’s overbearing insistence on being the best. By the way, both guys are also interested in Melur. Then we have Melur herself, who oddly enough seems to have fewer issues than the rest – at least until later on.