Royston Tan's 12 Lotus Review 《十二莲花》

I really enjoyed Royston Tan's '881' when I saw it on DVD last year.  When I heard he was doing another movie with cast members Mindee Ong,  Yi Qiwu and Liu Lingling named '12 Lotus' 《十二莲花》 I was totally looking forward to seeing it!  

'881'  was a HUGE hit in the Singapore market, but I had heard that this one wasn't received quite as well.  So I went into it with muted expectations.    Despite those muted expectations,  I still had trouble enjoying the movie much.  :-(

The director really goes out on a limb making a movie of a very similar subject matter (getai in Singapore) to his previous blockbuster hit.... and doing it in almost the exact same style (musical) and using almost the same exact cast (everyone except Yeo Yann yann).   lots of fancy musical numbers, extravagant costumes, etc. 

Comparisons are natural and some people are going to expect '12 Lotus'  to be just '881 part 2'...      and if you don't give it to them, they're probably going to be unhappy....     But that's not why I didn't enjoy this movie.

Despite a healthy dose of melodrama,  '881' was basically a comedy, with a lot of light hearted scenes and campy humor thrown in.  On the other head.... despite ALSO including lavish stage performances, costumes and musical numbers....    '12 Lotus' is basically a tragedy... in the Shakespeare or Greek way.. IE -  the main character doesn't just have a little bit of misfortune,  they basically have a life full of it.   Three different actresses play the title character at three different stages of her life.  

If you're going to do a tragedy it has to be done just right...   it has to get the tone right,  to be believable, it has to have a few twists and turns to keep the audience's interest.... its not easy!  I felt Zhang Yimou's film 'To Live'  did a good job, perhaps because it still has an underlying positivity of survival....  '12 Lotus' doesn't quite get it right.  Tragedy for the sake of tragedy is not enough... for me at least. I have to understand what people's motivations are.  In '12 Lotus' you don't really get why these bad things are happening to the characters, they just are.    You do get some strange humor out of Liu Lingling, but by the time you see it,  it seems really out of place in such a 'downer' movie...

The performances are good, especially Mindee's performance as the 'middle'  period

of the story.   She gives a very striking performance in some very dramatic scenes. 

I'll give it a 5/10.  Thats with a +1 for Mindee Ong's performance and +1 for the music. 

As for what specifically I didn't like about it: 

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1. I don't get the motivation of the father?  What is the point in beating your child unendingly with a stick while shouting for her to sing?  Maybe I have not had enough exposure to abusive people,  but it doesn't seem believable to me.

2. I DEFINITELY don't get the motivation of the gambling house guys who trick Lotus and her dad with their bizarre plan to rape her...  completely unbelievable:  Basically they would have had this discussion:   "let's bribe her father with cash to let this successful getai performer become her partner, then swindle the father out of that money with crooked gambling... then get him to sign an IOU,  then because the daughter has simultaneously fallen in love with the getai guy...who is secretly plotting with us, she'll agree to go with us to the place where we plan on gang raping her.     Oh, and getai guy has to disappear from town forever... " 

Just doesn't make sense!    for me these motivation things are important for making an emotional connection with a movie...