INTERVIEW: EDMUND YEO

The debut feature length film of Edmund Yeo, River of Exploding Durians, became the first Malaysian film to compete at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2014. The film was an astonishingly assured debut that used poetic imagery and aesthetically innovative techniques to examine the effects of a rare earth plant on the residents of a seaside village. In this interview, I discuss the making of River of Exploding Durians with Edmund Yeo, as well as his cinematic influences.

River of Burning Durians felt like a very epic film, in terms of the scope of the story and the topics it covers. Can you talk a bit about how long it took you to shoot the film?

The film was shot in 17 days, but in a span of two months. Due to the structure of the film and the schedules of the actors, the shoot was mostly divided into different blocks; three to four days for the Ming/Mei Ann love story, a break during the Chinese New Year, then shooting another seven to eight days for the Teacher Lim/Hui Ling's story, spending another two to three days at the Cameron Highlands so we could shoot in the mountains and the tea plantation for the final block of the film, and so forth. We worked with a very low budget so we didn't have the luxury to shoot too much nor shoot too long.


I noticed, especially in terms of the flow of the narrative and the political revolutionary student recreation scenes, some homages to Edward Yang and even the French New Wave. Can you tell us about your influences for the film?

Thanks. You have definitely mentioned some of my deepest cinematic influences for this film, along with Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tarkovsky. I didn't consciously try to make a film similar to these masters. But I often watch and rewatch their works to study and contemplate. Due to the profound love I have for their works, it's probably inevitable that, instinctively, the filmmaking grammar and storytelling techniques I used were influenced by them! I was also doing my own Hou Hsiao-Hsien marathon shortly before the shoot, absorbing his masterworks like CIty of Sadness, Good Man Good Woman, Dust in the Wind, and The Time To Live and the Time To Die, so I was probably in a Hou Hsiao-Hsien phase during the shoot.


The acting all across the board was excellent. How were you able to get some of the leads into your film, and how was it like working with them?

I love working with actors, and also give them space to inhabit or embody their own characters so that we can all surprise ourselves with things we never visualized in the script. I take a very spontaneous approach when I shoot. I don't really work with storyboards because I prefer to figure out the compositions and the blocking when I'm on the set with my cinematographer and actors. So it becomes a very open process where everyone gets to discuss their ideas and such.

Among the actors playing the three young main characters, only Joey Leong (who plays Mei Ann) has a long experience in acting. Joey started out as a child actress, and despite her young age, she had an old soul because she had been in the industry for so long, I thought she was very suitable as Mei Ann. 

The other two, Koe Shern (Ming) and Daphne Low (Hui Ling) were relatively newcomers. Koe Shern was about to start college, but he had some acting experience when he was a kid. Daphne, on the other hand, I've known her earlier because we worked together in a previous short film of mine. She was actually the first person to join this project. At that time she was a part-time model with some minor roles in some local TV sitcoms. 

Because our industry is really small, all three of them knew each other long before the shoot. So even though I only had one to two days to rehearse, they were able to convey a feeling of familiary among themselves. 

Casting Teacher Lim was very tricky. I first approached a few local Malaysian actresses whom I thought were suitable for the role, but they had to turn me down despite their interest in the script. The subject matter was touchy and they knew the film would not pass the local censors. Also, they could risk getting into trouble with the government. I could empathize with their fears, it is what it is. A few local actors have lost job opportunities and their whole careers for being critical towards authorities. 

At that time, during my struggles to find someone to play Teacher Lim, I have already shot some parts of the film. One evening, I spoke to a Taiwanese producer friend of mine about my frustration, and he gave me the idea of actually casting a Taiwanese actress for the role.

The Taiwanese and the Malaysian Chinese have rather similar accents, so it wouldn't be improbable to cast a Taiwanese actress in a Malaysian role.

The name Zhu Zhi-Ying popped up during my discussion with my friend. I had seen her in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, and also my friend Jay Chern's Golden Horse-winning short film Thief. So I immediately contacted her via Facebook, and to my disbelief, she replied almost immediately! We spent the night discussing the role, the film and somehow, the works of Yukio Mishima too. The next day, she said yes.

Having Zhi-Ying on the set was great, especially during the classroom scenes. I guess there was a feeling of freshness and slight intimidation because she was a foreign actress. So the kids playing the students were literally treating her like their teacher.

Were any elements of the story based on or inspired by real life events? I’m wondering specifically about the story of the revolutionary teacher Ms. Lim, and the construction of the rare earth plant.

The construction of the rare earth plant was based on real life events. It's an ongoing controversy that remains until this very day. The rare earth plant was built near a coastal village and it generated a lot of protests and anger due to the risk of radiation and such. 

The anger was justified. We had a similar case in the 1980s when a rare earth plant caused lasting damages upon the residents of the nearby town during its operations. It was a national tragedy.

Yet we wondered how could the authorities allow another construction of rare earth plant in the country, whilst disregarding the well-being of the people who live around the area. It's another case of capitalism being our king.


The country of Malaysia was portrayed very vividly in the film, both on a visual and auditory level. Can you talk about how this film was specific to Malaysia in terms of the themes and plot?

Using the aforementioned events as a backdrop, I constructed a fictional story of Malaysians and Malaysia at that particular moment in history. When protesters were not allowed to protest, when the State-controlled mainstream media would function as mere propaganda for the government, when young Malaysians were constantly hoping to leave the country for a better life. Many Malaysian Chinese of my generation grew up with parents who wanted us to leave the country when we could.

I also wanted to question the public education system, which were seldom improved upon over the decades. Generations of Malaysians were taught to be obedient, were taught that academic results were more important than anything else, but they were never taught to ask questions, nor taught to appreciate art and culture, and most importantly, we weren't taught to have empathy. All we had to do was to score As for exams and the school will tell us that we'll have a bright future ahead of us.

The four main characters in my film were extensions of myself. I think the high school students in my films reflected my frustrations during my teens, while Teacher Lim, who was closer to me in age when I was shooting the film, embodied my more recent concerns.

I noticed that the film seemed to be separated into two specific halves, with the first half being about the love story between Ming and Mei Ann, and the second half focusing on Ms. Lim and Hui Ling, and her attempts to start a revolutionary protest movement. How did you go about with structuring the film in these two halves, and was it challenging to put them together for you?

I like to take a more novelistic approach in developing and telling my stories. For Durians, I wanted to tell fragments of stories, from different character perspectives, so that gradually, as the film unfolds, you can put the larger picture together. 

In a way I liked defying expectations. What seemed like an innocuous coming-of-age teen love story gradually becomes a gateway into the darker aspects of our nation. The subjugation of history, the insidious intellectual repression, and so forth.

While I left a lot of blanks in my script for actors to improvise, and also experimented a lot when I was editing, I ended up being quite faithful towards the original structure I've developed. 

I was also trying to tell the beginning of a love story, but the beginning happened only at the end of the film, with the two characters you weren't expecting.

What for you was the significance of portraying the Chinese Lunar New Year Festival at the end of the film?

Chinese Lunar New Year has always been a time of joy and reconnection with friends and family. You contemplate what you have gone through, while hoping for a better future. Coincidentally, I shot the film around the Chinese Lunar New Year period, so I integrated it into my ending as a last-minute decision. I thought that would be the perfect time for my two protagonists, who had endured so much during the film, to meet. It was the first feature film I've ever made, so I wanted to end it with a sense of hope. 


Can you talk about any current or future projects you are working on?

I finished River of Exploding Durians in 2014.  Three years later I made my follow-up feature, Aqerat (We, the Dead).  I'm now finishing up my new film Malu (which means 'Ashamed' in Malay), the film is a decades-spanning family saga set in Malaysia and Japan, with a cast and crew from both countries. It's also an intimate project that I've shot on and off over the span of two years. I will premiere it this year.

I'm also writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of a novella by a well-known Japanese novelist. I'm still rather early in development for that one, but hopefully I'll be shooting the film late this year in Tokyo, after the Olympics!