Personal filmmaking this unflinching and intense is rare among Southeast Asian filmmakers. Singaporean artist and director Megan Wonowidjoyo dives in fearlessly, headfirst, into this self-confessed “trauma exorcism” of abandonment and single-parenthood over three generations of her family. At the heart of the bleeding wound is her Chinese Indonesian mother, Third Wife (mistress) of an Indonesian tycoon, who had been upstaged by her own housemaid—the maid, molested by the tycoon, had a son, a child with a penis, while she the wife gave birth to this cursed girl who has cost her everything and grew up to make this film. While this is indeed another film of family pain to conclude that Chinese women live horror movie lives, the director’s lyrical creativity takes us into a brave new world.

(Alice Skinhead)

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