Dear You Review: This Tearjerking Teochew Drama Connects Chinese Families Across Generations

Dear You  (PG13)

Starring Li Sitong, Wang Yantong, Wu Shaoqing, Zheng Runqi, Wang Xiaohui, Usha Seamkhum

Directed by Lan Hongchun

Editor’s note: This review is based on the film's original Teochew-language version.

You will cry.

I did. And I'm not Teochew.

Particularly when this pic goes from being light-hearted to a full-blown drama. As reflected on the face of its terrific breakout star, Li Sitong, whose pensive, stoic gaze concealing strength, setbacks and personal loss induces free-flowing tears.

The buzz about this sleeper smash-hit from China isn't kidding. This is a great, touching, inherently sad but very relatable film for Chinese-origin folks here. Especially older ones.

For full immersion, you need to see it in its original dialect*. The regional Teochew spouted is formidable even for our speakers. But this authenticity is vital for a complete transportation to a bygone era of simplicity, sacrifice and struggle which overseas Chinese, in fact or myth, may still recall. Even more so than mainlanders getting their eyes opened to the huaqiao (Chinese citizens abroad) diaspora.

This is a linked experience of which reactions from those who leave and those who stay are bound to be very different.

Dear You, directed and co-written by Shantou (Swatow) native Lan Hongchun, is a superb amalgamation of historical record, nostalgic throwback and emotional resonance. It spans time and memory which are filled with hope and hardship, happiness and heartbreak, longing and languishing.

At its core, it's a poignant family chronicle, set across the seas, that's connected by good letters — crucial, fascinating qiaopi remittance letters — and disconnected by bad fate. Due to a decades-old misunderstanding, one side does not know how noble the other side has been.

The show is fuelled by astonishing performances from its mostly unheard-of, first-time cast. The most astonishing and perfectly nuanced role comes from finance student-novice actress Li, playing Zia Lamgi, a brave anchor/empathic observer/burden-carrying soul in Bangkok's Chinatown in the 1940s-50s. An independent-minded, proto-modern Thai-born Chinese woman who's ahead of her time. “I feel secure relying on myself,” she affirms, turning down an amusing string of suitors.

Running a crammed hostel for fellow-Teochew migrant workers with her drunk but supportive father, she meets Den Bhagseng (Wang Yantong), a rough, resourceful and decent new arrival.

The initially-hostile tenant leaves behind his cherished wife, Sogriu (Wu Shaoqing and Wang Xiaohui play older and younger versions convincingly), in Shantou, Guangdong, during the Chinese Civil War. To sail to Nanyang (Southeast Asia) to find hard, honest work as a rickshaw peddler in Siam (now Thailand) to send money home.

Yep. It's movie-script manipulative. But it works.

Crisscrossing current time and flashbacks, we follow the story of this displaced man, yearning to return to China but destined never to, like an unravelling mystery. Believing that he's living in Thailand with a new family, Bhagseng's debt-ridden grandson, Hiou-ui (Zheng Runqi), travels there to find his supposedly rich grandpa.

His still-living grandma, Sogriu, who corresponded lovingly with her absentee-husband at first, had already turned against him in bitter hatred for nearly 20 years after receiving a photograph of his new family.

Hiou-ui, updating everybody on his handphone, discovers that there's more to the entire saga than meets the eye. The letters, money and gifts his grandfather sent over somehow continued even after Bhagseng was found to have died long ago in 1960. Because Lamgi secretly, heroically had taken over the responsibility.

In past-life scenes meaningful and moving, we see Bhagseng bond with Lamgi — both actors are wonderful together — over serendipitous times. He organises clandestine, forbidden Chinese language lessons for children. She, learning to write the words herself, starts to pen for her faithful, illiterate friend, his innermost thoughts to his faraway love.

“Siam may be far away, but my heart knows where it belongs,” the gal writes for the guy to assure his separated beloved.

Two women love the same good man from a distance. One, properly, over the ocean. The other, platonically, within propriety.

Now, a comparison can be made with the Thai hit, How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies. Well, that's a story. This is heritage.

FYI. Grandma Usha Seamkhum pops up here. In an opportunistic, too out-of-place appearance which is this flick's only cave to populism. It also, unfortunately and unnecessarily (to me anyway), features sinister Indians as the bad guys here.

Director Lan, making his third Teochew pic after Back to Love and Proud of Me, has nevertheless crafted an incredibly moving tale adapted from real letters that touches hearts and connects roots.

He totally nails it by placing captivating newcomer Li right at its centre. Including a truly memorable scene at a remittance office where she witnesses the stories being told by kindred men far away from their common homeland.

Li Sitong here gives us a nobly chaste, sweetly melancholic reason to write a kind letter to a loved one ourselves. (4.5/5 stars) now in cinemas

Photo: GV Pictures

Dear You is being released commercially in a Mandarin-dubbed version. Eight special screenings of the original Teochew version will be held at GV VivoCity from June 18-21. More information here.