Reviewed by Jarrett Yang

As a feature film director, Anthony Chen turned 10 in 2023. 

2023, a surprisingly productive year for Chen, saw two feature films premiering across the world – The Breaking Ice (燃冬) and Drift. The former is Chen’s first Mainland Chinese film and the latter is his first English-language film. Chen’s resume lists four full-length narrative features currently, his debut Ilo Ilo (爸妈不在家) was released exactly a decade prior, in 2013, and his second feature, Wet Season (热带雨),  six years later. 

Speaking at the post-screening Q&A for the second screening of Drift at the 2023 Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), on 10 Dec, Chen attributed the productive year to “all the pent-up energy over the COVID years”. The 39-year-old writer-director also shared that he has “numerous ideas and projects lined up”. 

In chronological order of release in Singapore, Drift is Chen’s latest film, and also the first which he did not write the screenplay. Despite this, watching Drift gave me the impression as though it was adapted and written by Chen himself (Drift is based on the novel A Marker to Measure Drift by Alexander Maksik). 

The immediate time following the screening and Q&A had me thinking about Chen’s filmography. All four features of his clearly share thematic similarities, but it took me a while to finally deduce what, for me, is the one common subject across all four of Chen’s features – solace. Solace fits Chen’s films perfectly because there is no solution, or resolution, in those stories. If anything, his films barely have any clear or major conflicts to overcome by the protagonists. 

Solace is a timeless theme and there can never be a moment when the world has exhausted all stories to explore it. For Chen to sustain his career and ensure his films will always have a sizable audience who is genuinely curious to wander around in his cinematic universe, how he continues to develop this theme in his subsequent works can determine his artistic progress as a filmmaker. 

Although this piece does not seek to rank Chen’s four features, it is nonetheless imperative to state that Chen’s best work to date is perhaps still his debut feature Ilo Ilo. His second feature Wet Season, emotional as it was, felt undercooked, though not significantly, as compared to his debut. 

The central characters in Ilo Ilo were probably the closest to an average Singaporean family and thus might have connected with viewers more easily. In addition, the film was situated in a specific setting in Singapore’s history (i.e. the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis), as well as being the recipient of numerous accolades across the world, such as the Camera d’Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, and four Golden Horse Awards including Best Narrative Feature at the 2013 ceremony. Hence, one could say Ilo Ilo had some advantages in its appeal to a wider audience. 

Still of Haoran Liu (left), Dongyu Zhou and Chuxiao Qu (right) in “The Breaking Ice” Credit: Canopy Pictures and Huace Pictures 

However, Chen’s 2023 films have shown evident signs of increased maturity in his craft. Take The Breaking Ice for example, where the three leads played compelling and captivating characters that I enjoyed getting to know, and would gladly see in another film, television series, or even read in a novel. In this regard, I look forward to Chen’s original characters in his future films, but I also expect to see more complex characters from more diverse backgrounds. A male protagonist might be something fresh to anticipate, hopefully in the near future. 

Still of Cynthia Erivo as Jacqueline in “Drift” Credit: Paradise City Films, Heretic and Fortyninesixty 

In Drift, Chen succeeded in eliciting Jacqueline’s (Cynthia Erivo) pain. The film, however, does not take the typical path of seeking the viewer’s sympathy or exploiting the subject matter of displacement, refuge and trauma. On one hand, Chen stuck to his familiar character-study method of telling Jacqueline’s story and the film worked to some degree because of that; on the other hand, I’m curious how Chen would have fared making a documentary feature on a real-life “Jacqueline” instead. The film is also undeniably boosted by Erivo’s excellent yet harrowing performance. 

While Chen was fairly effective in shedding light on stories of those like Jacqueline, Drift didn’t feel much of a deviation from his other works which he also wrote the screenplay. By and large, Drift is a considerably successful attempt by Chen at stepping out of his (most) comfortable zone. Of course, he can, and should, take larger creative risks in his subsequent projects. 

Trying to predict Chen’s future as a filmmaker isn’t exactly easy or difficult. For one, it has been made known that he will reunite with Yeo Yann Yann and Koh Jia Ler to finish filming his “growing up” trilogy (the first two films being Ilo Ilo and Wet Season). However, what other stories are lined up for Chen remain to be seen. That said, unless it is explicitly stated by him, similar explorations of solace can be expected, though Chen did casually share at the above-mentioned post-screening Q&A of Drift, that he told his agent to source comedies for him to direct. 

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This review is also published on Singapore Film Society as part of *SCAPE’s Film Critics Lab: A Writing Mentorship Programme.