Songlap

The best surprises are the unexpected ones. The director/screenwriting partnership formed by Effendee Mazlan and Fariza Azlina Isahak positively impressed anyone who followed film in the Malay language in 2008, thanks to their feature debut Kami. A film which never strayed far from the youngsters it portrayed, in its writing and images, boiling over with vital energy, at times uncontrolled perhaps, but a sign of a dynamism which is hard to come by in Malaysian commercial productions.
With their second film, Songlap, Effendee and Fariza score an unexpected goal, which really does place them in the very limited group of new faces promising a renewed future for the sadly oppressive production scene in Kuala Lumpur and its surroundings. The energy which characterised Kami remains at the service of a more mature tale, in terms of writing, and the images and sounds are used to help the tale unfurl its portrayal of complex and tormented characters who find themselves trapped by ethical and social conflicts depicting modern day urban Malaysia as no other commercial film has managed thus far.
At the centre of the story are two brothers, Am (Shaheizy Sam) and Ad (Syafie Naswip), whose relationship is anything but easy. The two are involved in murky criminal dealings which see them involved in the profitable trafficking of newborns, in turn connected to the traffic of young mothers, sold off as prostitutes. The older brother, Am, is deeply involved in this business, and seems completely unbothered by either scruples or moral questions; what counts is the money, survival and the chance for someone who grew up on the street to enjoy the good life he could never previously afford. The younger brother, Ad, on the other hand, is troubled by his part in these illegal activities. The death of his best friend from an overdose brings him ever closer to conflicts with his brother and to questioning his past and his future. On the one hand, he would like to finally get closer to his prostitute mother who abandoned them; on the other, he would like to pursue his dream of becoming a hip hop dancer — and perhaps of leaving the sea of superficial lights of Kuala Lumpur far behind him. Am and Ad’s destinies cross paths with that of young Hawa, the sister of Ad’s friend, who decides to run away from home and from her violent and overly strict taxi-driver father — who refuses to bury her brother because of his shameful death — while bearing a child of mysterious, if obvious, paternity…
The narrative premise of Songlap (an untranslatable term which encompasses scam, cheat, embezzlement) seems to be a brave challenge to the formulaic laziness of Malay productions and, even more so, to the draconian and whimsical moral rigours of the local censor: the traffic of children and women, drug abuse, prostitution, murderous pursuits in full daylight, incest and even parricide are dangerous and explosive ingredients that in less careful and sensitive hands could have given life to a merely sensationalist exploitation film. But no, Effendee and Fariza, despite using recognisable components of the genre, show that they know the limits of what needs to be said and what doesn’t, what needs to be shown and what can be deduced. A sign of auteurial maturity, remarkable in a second feature which not only contains exceptional characters — played by praiseworthy actors, especially the pair of brothers, the apparently heartless loudmouth Shaheizy Sam and the fragile, doe-eyed Syafie Naswip, truly memorable — but which is also an aching but hopeful hymn for a generation (and a country) searching for itself (note the irony of the chase scene, accompanied by the song Mencari Malaysia, Looking For Malaysia). A hope that Songlap and its creators also give to the future of Malay cinema.