SINdie Review: Fundamentally Happy by Tan Bee Thiam and Lei Yuan Bin1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteFundamentally Happy, adapted from the namesake play staged in 2006, has rich material to cull from. The 2006 production is the first that I watched as a young Theatre Studies major and, if anything, it has only gotten better with age.
The film (and hence the play) revolves around Eric, a social worker who visits his childhood caretaker, Habiba, at her flat after not seeing her for nearly twenty years. He brings with him a dark secret that has burdened him those past two decades.
I remember the theatre piece as an incisive and uncompromising examination of paedophilia that boldly confronted the topic without so much as flinching. But the play doesn’t just concern itself with paedophilia. Looking back now, I realize how prescient it was of all the Issues of the Day, arguments that have gripped our culture and media with a fury. Issues debated hotly by activists and journalists, such as: the nature of the victim, and whether the “victim” may be somehow complicit in the “abuse”; the dynamics of the abuser-victim relationship, and who truly wields the power; and the causation of homosexuality ““ does childhood trauma or abuse have to play in the development of such an orientation?
What made the 2006 production so memorable, though, wasn’t just its script’s smart and subtle exploration of those topics. Rather, two powerful performances by Chua En Lai and Aidli “Alin” Mosbit, breathed life into the production and grounded the play’s rigorous examination of these issues with a warmth and humaneness. Fortunately, the performances by the film’s actors are similarly solid.
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