It was a completely foreign story for him - in fact, he says in an interview that he didn’t even know Malaysia was occupied by Japan. His 2011 Starry Starry Night was a collaboration between Taiwan, China and Hong Kong, based on a book by Taiwanese illustrator and author Jimmy (幾米), but this is a new challenge for him joining a Malaysian-British production with quality that rivals Hollywood (it’s co-produced by HBO Asia). Lin, by contrast, doesn’t have that much international experience. Chang is no stranger to international collaborations as a mainstay of Chinese-language cinema in China, Hong Kong and Malaysia and Singapore and she’s in her element here in an English-speaking role. The prolific Taiwanese actress Sylvia Chang (張艾嘉) plays Yun Ling 30 years later, delivering an emotional performance. But that probably would have bogged down the movie, which is already 120 minutes long what’s shown is enough to make the point for a feature film. Some complain that screenwriter Richard Smith got rid of the book’s lengthy musings on culture, race and colonialism, which is indeed a bit understated given the diversity of the characters. While this reviewer has not read the novel, it’s not hard to infer from the movie why the book was so successful. The strong and engaging storytelling drives the film. It fully plays upon the complex and tense racial relations during that time Yun Ling, who hates the Japanese, is briefly courted by a British official’s son, but she ends up getting closer to Aritomo, who may or may not have been working for the Japanese during the war. It’s a riveting tale that, although moves at a relatively slow pace, rarely bores. He takes his time making his workers laboriously move giant stones until the stone tells him that it’s in the right place. Abe personifies the garden - philosophical, esoteric and seemingly cold and unemotional, but also alluring and calming.
To fulfill the dream of her sister, who died in a Japanese internment camp, Yun Ling (Lee) ends up as an apprentice for the mysterious Aritomo (Hiroshi Abe), a self-exiled imperial gardener who has been building his “Evening Mist” garden in the lush Cameron Highlands.
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