"Sepet"

Watched "Sepet" by Yasmin Ahmad (here is her blog) today. A multi-lingual, inter-racial, heart-warming story about teenage love between a Chinese pirated VCD-seller ("Sepet" means "chinese eyes") and a upper-class cultured Malay scholar. The story was engaging as an unlikely love story between teenagers from two very disparate worlds in the same town and the acting was on-the-whole endearing from these first time actors and actresses. The audience was left with fond memories of Ah Loong, Orked and Orked's parents. However, the actor playing Keong was a bit stilted and scenes with him seemed to slow the momentum of the show.

In an interview with Sun2Surf, Yasmin explained that her first feature film was about love because nothing interests her more than people who are in love. If you put her in a beautiful landscape and she sees a couple smooching, she will be totally captivated by them. Yasmin thinks that people in love are the real hope of the world.

First love has always fascinated her because it happens to you at a time when you have not yet learned to lie to yourself. With first love, within five minutes, you accept the other person for everything he/she is. She believes that first love is the truest love of all.

"Sepet" was inspired by big pieces of Yasmin's life. Her ex-husband is an Indian while her current one is Chinese.

She wanted to write a movie showing that it is possible to love someone without understanding him/her first.

I cried through the movie because it reminded me of a time, a long time ago, when I too was looking for someone-someone to share my life and my hopes and dreams with. Someone to whom I could say, like Ah Loong,"I loved you before I knew you and I've been waiting all my life for you." I realised that that all around the world, for generations and generations, people have had this intense longing. And the person we have all been yearning for is one and the same: Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, who fulfils every longing and need.