Strength in face of deathSarah Roxanne Sim

Singapore film-makers Jean Loo (belowleft), 28, and Yang Huiwen (below right),29, saw a person die before their eyes forthe first time when they were shootingAfter Cicely, a 20-minute documentaryon palliative care.

As they stood beside the 31-year-oldTaiwanese leukaemia patient breathinghis last, they fought tohold back their tears. “Wewere trying to composeourselves,” says Loo. “Wefelt that we were there todo our job and we didn’twant to add to the situa-tion.”

While there is a placefor professionalism, thereis also a place for someoneto show his emotions andempathy, as Sister Geral-dine Tan discovered.

Now the administrator of St Joseph’sHome & Hospice in Singapore and one ofthe women featured in After Cicely, theCatholic nun chose to go into palliativecare chiefly because she wanted to be ableto show her empathy for patients openly.

In the film, she recounts an incidentthat inspired her to dedicate her life topalliative care. “When I entered nursing,a family had just lost someone in theward. I was crying with them and one ofthe ones in charge at the hospital said,‘You are a nurse, you should not be cry-ing. Go and wash your face.’

“It kind of threw me off and I said if Ireally want nursing, I want nursing that Ican empathise and I wanted palliative

care because of that. That I can reallylisten with the heart, listen with mymind, with my emotions and yet be sup-portive to the family.”

Sister Geraldine, 58, is one of fivewomen featured in After Cicely, whichtakes its name from Dame CicelySaunders, commonly referred to as thefounder of the modern hospice movementin the 1960s.

The film, commissionedby the non-profit LienFoundation as part of itsLife Before Death initia-tive, which aims to empow-er people living the lastdays of their lives, docu-ments the work of SisterGeraldine as well as that ofDr Odontuya Davaasurenin Mongolia, Dr Thuy BuiThi Bich in Vietnam, MrsSalma Choudhury inBangladesh and Professor

Chantal Chao Co-shi in Taiwan.It is available for public viewing online

at the After Cicely official website,www.aftercicely.com.

Lien Foundation is an organisationfounded by the late Dr Lien Ying Chow in1980 to empower people, particularly inareas such as education, eldercare andenvironmental sustainability.

Loo and Yang worked with Dr CynthiaGoh, adviser to the foundation anddirector of Lien Centre for PalliativeCare, to get in touch with the womenfeatured.

Sister Geraldine, who declined to beinterviewed by Life!, is described by Looas a “rather private person”.

She chooses to draw attention to herwork and the benefits of palliative care.She had worked with the foundation forthe Happy Coffins project as part of theLife Before Death campaign in 2010 andwas again supportive of the foundation’scause this time around.

The Happy Coffins project aimed todestigmatise death.

Loo says: “We had a very long con-versation with her and the foundation.After she spoke to us, she was up for it.The subject matter was a cause that shefelt for.”

She and Yang, both full-time film-makers, say that it is the humanity thatthese women display, as well as theirstrength and tenacity throughout it all,that inspired them to take on the project,which took six months to film and edit.

Loo says: “Death is an intimate subjectthat you cannot force down people’sthroats. We thought that showing the sto-ries of these women would help to bringacross the idea of palliative care in a man-ner that people can relate to.

“For me, what stood out was how thepeople working in palliative care were so

cheerful and positive. They brought somuch life to the end process and it wasquite symbolic in that sense. Theyshowed a lot of strength in character,which is inspiring.”

Yang, who was previously based inShanghai as a journalist with BloombergNews, hopes that the audience will besimilarly inspired. “I hope the film andstories featured remind people to livebetter every day.”

To view After Cicely, go towww.aftercicely.com.

Review Psychological thriller

STOKER (M18)99 minutes/Opens today/

The story: India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) loses her

dad Richard (Dermot Mulroney) in a road accident on

her 18th birthday. When her charming, long-lost uncle

Charlie (Matthew Goode) joins their household, it is

enthralling and yet unsettling for her and her mother(Nicole Kidman). A serial killer might be on the loose

but India’s reaction is strangely calm.

Foong Woei Wan

Stoker is a psychosexual dramatold as a Gothic fairy tale, andSouth Korean director ParkChan Wook, with his storybookvisual style and fondness for the

pretty and the queasy, seems to be theman to bring it to screen.

So it feels at first.The opening of Park’s first Hollywood

film, flitting through the lonely childhoodgames of female protagonist India (MiaWasikowska) to her father’s death on her18th birthday, sets the mood handsomely.

In a few frames, their sprawling manortransforms from a lush playground to afuneral ground – and perhaps a burial siteof dark secrets.

The setting is so timeless and uncan-ny, it is a surprise when a charactermakes an allusion to the 1990s – as if awitch’s spell has been broken.

India, quiet, watchful and apparentlyimpassive in mourning, is not quite whatshe seems (of course).

Nor is her uncle Charlie (MatthewGoode), a mystery man who attends thefuneral and stays on. Disturbingly, he

appears to be flirting with his brother’swidow Evie (Nicole Kidman), while cast-ing attentive glances in India’s direction.

Or is he?Exquisite cross-cuts, flipping between

the past and present, the real and imagi-nary, get you inside India’s head and giveyou a sense of what she is longing for.

There is a feverish piano duet, whichturns erotic. A wooden pencil box is

slammed shut, summoning a memory of amakeshift coffin being closed.

At one point, someone is stabbed witha pencil and Park, the maestro ofviolence, seems to take pleasure in ascene where the bloody, unlikely weaponis sharpened, making squishing sounds aswood petals fall on a table.

However, as India’s self-knowledgedeepens, and sex and death move into theforeground, the slow-burning film doesnot quite catch fire.

Nor does it hit the emotional boilingpoint of Park’s Korean films, which hewrote and directed, such as Oldboy(2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005),where the characters are as vivid as thedramatic interiors of their domains.

Instead, as people (including JackiWeaver as an elderly relative) disappearin Stoker and secrets are revealed, thescreenplay – by Prison Break actor Went-worth Miller – shifts to garden-varietyserial-killer territory.

The tension quickly leaks out of thefilm and things become tepid.

Sure, it is one lovely garden. But fromPark, you expect so much more.

woeiwan@sph.com.sg

Swift calls jab on love life sexist

Director Park ChanWook’s Hollywood debutlacks the high tensiontouch he is famed for

Los Angeles – Country popsinger Taylor Swift hit backat comedians Tina Fey andAmy Poehler for mocking herlove life at Hollywood’s Gold-en Globe Awards this year,calling the jab sexist in aninterview with magazineVanity Fair on Tuesday.

During the awards broad-cast, hosts Fey and Poehlerthrew a barb at the singer,telling her to “stay away”from actor Michael J. Fox’s23-year-old son.

Swift is well known fordocumenting her personalrelationships in her songs,often leaving little clues inthe lyrics that hint at the sub-ject.

She has been linked tohigh-profile celebrities suchas John Mayer, Jake Gyllen-haal, Taylor Lautner, JoeJonas and, more recently,Conor Kennedy and OneDirection’s Harry Styles.

In the Vanity Fair April cover story, Swift, 23,responded to the Globes incident by citing a saying(attributed to former secretary of state MadeleineAlbright) told to her by talk-show host Katie Couricthat “there’s a special place in hell for women whodon’t help other women”.

“For a female to write about her feelings, andthen be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperategirlfriend... I think that’s taking something thatpotentially should be celebrated – a woman writingabout her feelings in a confessional way – that’staking it and turning it and twisting it into some-thing that is frankly a little sexist,” Swift said.

Her latest hit We Are Never Ever Getting BackTogether was presumed to be about Gyllenhaal; IKnew You Were Trouble is said to be about Mayer.

Swift, who notably refuses to reveal details of herpersonal life, said “since 2010, I have dated exactlytwo people”, referring to Kennedy and Styles.

According to Vanity Fair, Swift gave permission

for an unnamed source to speakabout her relationships in moredetail, revealing that Styles, 19,had “chased” her for a year and

“wore her down” into dating him.The relationship ended after he was

photographed kissing another woman but he “pur-sued her for the better part of a year until she finallytook him back”, the source said.

Swift has seen her music slowly becoming over-shadowed by the spotlight cast on her private life.“I’m dealing with a little bit of a chaotic media cir-cus now... But there’s also a lesson in all this... Inknowing that you can live your life in a way thatyou’re proud of and people are still gonna takeshots,” she said.

Contacted by The Hollywood Reporter for com-ment, Poehler, 41, said: “Aw, I feel bad if she wasupset. I am a feminist and she is a young and talent-ed girl. That being said, I do agree I am going to hell.But for other reasons. Mostly boring tax stuff.”

At the New York premiere of her film Admissionon Tuesday, Fey, 42, responded: “It was a joke. Itwas a light-hearted joke.”

Reuters

Chilling start, lukewarm finish

PHOTOS: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS

A joke by Golden Globes hostsTina Fey (above left) and AmyPoehler (above right) askingTaylor Swift (left) to stay awayfrom actor Michael J. Fox’sson has riled the singer.

Palliative care documentaryAfter Cicely features fivewomen in the field, includingSister Geraldine Tan (right).

PHOTOS: JEAN QINGWEN LOO AND LIEN FOUNDATION

Tense trio:(from far left)Matthew Goode,Nicole Kidmanand MiaWasikowska trybut fail to liftpsychologicalthriller Stoker.PHOTO:TWENTIETHCENTURY FOX

C6 LLIIFFEE!! T H U R S D A Y , M A R C H 7 , 2 0 1 3

Source: The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Reproduced with permission.