TIFF Report: Rain Dogs Review
A quietly meditative piece Ho Yuhang's Rain Dogs is a strangely affecting piece of work, a coming of age picture that follows its teen lead through both urban and rural environments in modern day Malaysia. Beautifully shot and smartly constructed Rain Dogs is a purely observational piece following nineteen year old Tung through his final vacation before heading to college, a brief period that will define the rest of Tung's life.
At nineteen, rasied by his single mother and with a brother working for a bookie in Kuala Lumpur following a split in the family back home Tung should have been ushered into adulthood well before now, but he has moved through life with a sort of bemused detachment that keeps him on the outside looking in. But that all changes for Tung following one fateful trip to visit his brother in the big city. Tung is robbed twice on that trip and just days after his return home his older brother is killed in a random bar fight forcing Tung to reevaluate his own life, however reluctantly.
Played by the completely inscrutable Kuan Choon Wai Tung must make arrangement for his brother's funeral, is presented with an opportunity for revenge, has his own split with his mother thanks to her thieving secret boyfriend and goes to live with an aunt and uncle, where he is taught to shoot, becomes a surrogate father figure for his young cousin and gets caught up in a love triangle with a pair of sisters, one of whom he falls in love with while the other falls for him.
Rain Dogs has a beautifully dream like quality to it almost as though director Ho is looking back on the memories of his own youth. Tung is an almost entirely passive player in his own life simply drifting from scenario to scenario, a situation that allows Ho to capture different elements of Malaysian life and culture while also layering in some subtle observatons and social criticisms of his homeland. It is the sort of richly observed film in which very little actually seems to happen but which, nonetheless, leaves you feeling fully satisfied on completion.
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