‘Wonderland’ Examines Friendship, Fatherhood and the American Dream in 1980s Singapore – SGIFF

Naman Ramachandran
·4 min read
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Chai Yee-Wei’s “Wonderland” comes to the Singapore International Film Festival after debuting at the San Diego Asian Film Festival where it won the audience award.

Chai’s credits include “Blood Ties” (2009), “Twisted” (2011) and “That Girl in Pinafore” (2013), which premiered at the Shanghai International Film Festival. “Wonderland” is his fifth feature. He is the founder of Singaporean post-production house Mocha Chai Laboratories.

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Set in 1980s Singapore, “Wonderland” follows two middle-aged fathers – Loke, who owns a joss paper shop and lives with his daughter Eileen, and Tan, a lonely church pianist and recovering alcoholic-gambler. They become friends after Loke sells his house to fund Eileen’s studies abroad and moves next to Tan. Filled with regrets over his own estranged daughter, Tan offers to translate and transcribe the illiterate Loke’s correspondences with Eileen. When Tan learns about a tragedy, he constructs an elaborate lie to protect Loke from the truth.

The cast includes Mark Lee, Peter Yu and Xenia Tan.

“This story was inspired by an incident that happened during my years as a foreign student in the U.S. more than 20 years ago. This film explores the hopes, dreams and fears of a Southeast Asian parent for his daughter, pursuing the American dream. Singaporeans of the 1980s-90s looked to the West as the promised land, and my film seeks to ask the questions of how far one would go in pursuit of that dream,” Chai told Variety.

“To a large extent, Singaporeans’ mentality of looking beyond the shores as a ‘wonderland’ still stands, whether it be education, media, fashion, taste, or knowledge. The inability to recognize and value our own talents is something that as a society, we have yet to overcome,” Chai added.

The film is produced by Michelle Chang and Chia Choong Kai and written by Chang, Allan Ho and Chance Wanlass.

“It resonated with me at so many levels: Singapore has not had a film of such a nature for a long time; we have our usual slapstick comedies you will find launched during every Chinese New Year and horror-thriller fare during our Ghost months or Halloween, as they are generally perceived as safer bets in the box office. ‘Wonderland’ stands out for me as it is neither. It is a family drama set in the 1980s about how white lies ironically seal an unlikely friendship between two men,” Chang told Variety.

“‘Wonderland’ is tonal and layered – the kind of film I personally enjoy. On a personal level, I have a wonderful relationship with my father and when I was young, my father would expose me to everything American – music, fashion and art. I am always been fascinated with strong bonds and unlikely friendships between two men, for instance ‘Green Book,’ ‘Sideways’ and ‘Joint Security Area,’ where meaningful male friendships are formed in the most unlikeliest of circumstances. I am fascinated with male friendships as it is acceptable and widely practised for women to draw each other out to share, to create a support system, but not so for men, especially Asian men. Hence when I was given the chance to write and produce it, I took it without hesitation,” Chang added.

The film will continue its festival journey before releasing commercially in Singapore in 2024. “We are planning a robust marketing campaign for the film leading up to its commercial cinema release next year. As this film is not our usual horror and slapstick comedy fare, it is going to be challenging for us at the local box office. Hence, we need to devise a different approach to marketing it; we will seek out like-minded partners and organizations to generate buzz at the grassroots level. Traditional forms of marketing will not work for this film. We are also considering iTunes movies as an option followed by SVOD,” Chang said.

Going forward, Chai is splitting his efforts between going hyperlocal for my his personal directorial projects, and producing projects with more commercial and international appeal. Chang has three series in development, two of which are funded by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and the third co-financed by Mocha Chai Laboratories, for markets beyond Singapore. Chang is also a painter, having featured in 20 exhibitions over the past decade. She is currently writing a treatment for animated film “The Blue Cat,” inspired by her paintings.

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