Flower in the Pocket

Young Chinese brothers Li Ohm and Li Ah spend their time underperforming in school, playing with a puppy they find in the street, and befriending a tomboyish Muslim girl named Ayu. What's missing from their lives is any real sense of family. Their absent mother has separated from their remote and taciturn father, who frets about his medical condition, generally keeps to himself, and seems more concerned with the mannequins he makes and repairs than with his real-life sons. But he is not uncaring and, in his idiosyncratic way, comes to assume his parental responsibilities in the end. In his first feature, director Liew Seng Tat again exhibits the quirky humor that marked his short films, while using the longer format to develop his talent for observation. Building on the basic contrasts in multiracial Malaysian society, Liew carefully distinguishes Ayu's warm and loving household from the Li family's barren lives. Meanwhile, leading Malaysian indie filmmaker James Lee (Beautiful Washing Machine) reminds us of his acting roots by turning in a superbly nuanced performance as the brooding, darkly eccentric father of few words, given to moments of compulsion and perplexity as he swings between moods of rejection and need. This may be a film about sons, but it's the father who faces the fear of growing up.

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