'Female Games' by Kan Lume - The Female Reivew

A woman, places her trust on someone, whom she could bare her raw emotions of vulnerability to.

As the film finished with Evelyn nicely planted on the bed, I was left feeling lost coupled with mixed and raw emotions collected throughout the movie. The constant drifting in between plots, attempts to link them up and deciphering the meanings were similar to a woman's ride of emotions during their relationships. As hard as I tried to grasp all the fluttering meanings of the film, so was I attempting to pen down these scattered thoughts on this page.

First and foremost, anyone who is interested to view this film, it is advised that they walked into the theaters with an open mind. This is definitely not a film wholly dedicated to lesbianism. On the contrary, this film, from my perspective at least, is dedicated to women.

A film that uncovers women and the bundled emotions that surfaces as they deal with different form of relationships. Tiny packages of emotional weariness and mentally challenged, which intertwines within a woman and surfaced continuously in the film, as she struggles to differentiate reality and their state of consciousness. The film also managed to continuously display distinctive contrast between the everyday Asian woman against a Western influenced Asian woman; the weak against the strong.

Amidst the variety of questions that were thrown around during the interview, this allowed the seemingly loose plot, clearer to my eyes. Similarly, the issues touched in the film became more personal, for a woman at least.

It all started off with two friends of differing characters who set off together to KL in search of their own dreams with hope of succeeding one day. As the story unfolds so did the raw emotions. This led to the two main themes; Friendship and Love. Funnily enough, in a woman's world, these two themes are intrinsically linked.

In 'Friendships', when two women are in 'Competition', things turned ugly. Especially in scenarios where one is an unwilling party, while the other a subconscious party. In a woman's world, as displayed within this movie, Competition results in low self-esteem, insecurities, battered pride, questionable psychological behaviour and so forth.

Similarly to ‘Love’, woman tends to let emotions take control of them, which eventually leads to the above-mentioned traits. In addition, the film does highlight how, a woman who is going through a mental breakdown and depression; with raw emotions that are running loose and subconsciously takes over her stable state of mind, could end up doing quite, unthinkable, unreasonable and unexplainable actions.

With the filmmaker’s attempt to grasp the complexity of woman's process of thoughts, their emotions and their logical thinking through this film, and I, as a woman, who attempts to write this review. I can't help but admit that a woman is not a easy person to understand. I have to give this man some credits for attempting to explain to the world the complexity of a woman’s behavioral traits through these two females. In a serious note, a woman is more than just attempting to piece up a jigsaw puzzle. They are at times, as complex as the nerves within our body.

I do not expect everyone who views this film to understand the film. However, I am sure most people who walked out from the film would be able to relate to certain intense emotions planted within the film, especially woman. This film may not be a good film to understand women. However, it is a good film to know and attempt to understand the various emotional journeys of women, as they face and react to different sort of relationships within a broad spectrum.

The only way to understand this film, is to watch the film and decipher the ‘hidden’ meanings yourself.

After all, this is called ‘Female Games’, right?