I AM at that age where most of my siblings and peers have essentially moved out of our parents’ homes, living independently in the city, or another country entirely. Wading into adulthood comes with its own set of challenges, but what happens to the lives of our parents once their nest is empty?
For many Asian households, the mother would often be resigned to the role of primary caretaker, forced to give up their own desires, needs and ambitions. In Ajoomma, we meet the title character (played by staple Singaporean television actress, Hong Huifang) who has to contend with such a dilemma.
One of the finer movies to have come out over the past year was Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, a meditation on motherhood titled The Lost Daughter, which starred Olivia Colman. While Gyllenhaal’s protagonist was a reluctant parent, Shuming’s heroine is a dedicated one.
We meet Auntie, a widower, whose life is anchored around her son’s. She prepares meals (that she herself doesn’t necessarily like) and schedules holidays according to his availability. She does these, I suspect, more as force of habit rather than duty, after inhabiting the role her entire life. In her spare time, she attends Tai Chi with her neighbors and obsessively watches Korean soap operas.
Despite living together, she shares an estranged relationship with her son. She knows nothing of his personal or social life. After her son, having planned and paid for a trip to South Korea, bails on her at the last minute – in a moment of complete spontaneity, and inspired by soap operas, she decides to make the trip without him.
Ajoomma picks up the pace and unfurls forward as she embarks on this journey. She meets Kwon Woo (Kang Hyung-suk), the tour guide, a young man approximately her son’s age. He himself is in debt with loan sharks and is going through a rough patch with his wife and infant daughter.
What’s a road movie without a series of twists and turns? Auntie gets left behind by her tour group, and unable to contact nor communicate with people around her due to the language barrier, is taken in by Jung Su (Jung Dong-Hwan), an older gentleman who works as a security guard. They form a loving bond, entirely through broken English and hand gestures.
The momentum heightens as they track their tour guide down, in the midst of a scuffle with loan sharks. Auntie attempts a daring rescue, and they escape by the skin of their teeth. While it sounds entirely ludicrous describing it on paper, truth is stranger than fiction after all, and Shuming deftly captures these larger-than-life moments, never steering into pathos or melodrama.
Learning to understand Kwon Woo despite his many shortfalls opens Auntie into accepting her closeted gay son, a fact only revealed towards the end. She returns to Singapore with a new sense of identity and self-worth.
He Shuming’s Ajoomma is a phenomenally gentle portrait of motherhood, of second chances and the beauty of fellowship (in the Biblical sense) with complete strangers. If the feverish political and cultural crises of the moment leave you in despair, Ajoomma is a balm that reminds us to look for the best in the people around us, despite appearing to have nothing in common. – The Vibes, November 6, 2022
Ajoomma is playing in selected GSC Cinemas screens now
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