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Issue 48 May / June 2015

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INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART MAGAZINE

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Dream Of Emerald Hill 翡翠山之夢 Short film by Jennifer Lim at The Art House, Singapore

原文 Ruyi Wong

April 11 – 12, 2015.

LeftStill from Dream of Emerald Hill directed by Jennifer Lim and Mingyu Lin, 2015. Jennifer Lim, Matt Grey, Scene of Kheng Lim (played by Jennifer Lim) sitting for an audition at RADA. Courtesy Moongate Productions.

BelowPhotograph of Kheng Lim. Courtesy Kheng Lim’s family.

92 93May June 2015 PiPeline Colour

As the chimerical title suggests, producer Jennifer Lim’s Dream of Emerald Hill makes no bones about its aspirations. Set during the British colonial rule of Singapore, the film is bursting with sepia tones and elaborate period costumes: men in conservative, well-pressed suits and women in tight cheongsams.

Dream Of Emerald Hill is partly a memoir of little-known thespian Kheng Lim, played by Jennifer Lim, who was one of Singapore’s first English- speaking stage actresses and the first actor of Southeast Asian descent to train at London’s prestigious RADA drama school.

The film is a mixture of gripping cinematic vignettes, including the Japanese occupation and the surrender of British colonial rule. Kheng’s name isn’t even mentioned until midway through. The struggle of a nascent colony is embodied in Kheng’s character of an English-speaking Chinese woman caught between east and west, her Asianness in conflict with English scripts.

Kheng stands up to the men around her, from a burly policeman to British male directors, disposing of traditional gender roles while re-articulating and representing gender stereotypes. filled with twists of fate, her story is one of success against all odds.

Her ferocity hits home as she subverts the female-victim stereotype so common in Asian cinema. It is easy to see that Kheng is Jennifer Lim’s alter ego; Lim is strikingly playing out her split self. Singapore-born, London-based Lim has said that she struggles to get away from stereotypical Asian roles. “We keep getting cast as immigrants who can’t really speak English,” she says.

However, the portrayal of Kheng comes across as one-dimensional, failing to examine other aspects of her life. A memoir records lives that would otherwise be transient and evanescent, but Dream Of Emerald Hill fails to address the fundamental question of why Kheng is little known today. The film is amnesiac, forgetting the point that it aims to address, the emanci-pation of women in early Singapore. Did Kheng direct her on-stage tenacity towards her role as a wife and mother, meaning that her thespian career took a backseat? How did Kheng hone her methodology of acting? What were her deep human needs, her desires and her habits? In this heavy-handed murk, curiosity about Kheng’s route to excel-lence, not only as an actress but also as a woman, is regrettably dismissed to a gnawing, untouched cavity.

顧名思義，製片人 Jennifer Lim 的《翡翠

山之夢》毫不諱言其願望。這部電影將時

間設於新加坡的英國殖民統治時期，整部

片子充滿懷舊的色彩和精緻的古裝：男人

們穿著保守而挺括的西裝，女人們穿著緊

身旗袍。 。

《翡翠山之夢》一定程度上是講述一位鮮

為人知的演員 Kheng Lim 的回憶錄，由

Jennifer Lim 飾演，她是新加坡第一批講

英文的舞台女演員之一，也是第一位在倫

敦著名的 RADA 戲劇學校受到正規訓練的

東南亞裔演員。這部電影混合了許多扣人

心懸的電影插曲，包括日本侵略和英國殖

民統治投降。Kheng 的名字直到影片中

途才被提到。一個新生的殖民地的掙扎在

Kheng 的性格中充分體現，一個說英文的

中國女人，困於東西方之間，她的亞洲性

與英文腳本相衝突。

Kheng 勇敢地面對她身邊的男人，從魁

梧的警察到英國男導演，處理傳統的性別

角色，然而重新闡述並代表了對性別的刻

板印象。她命運多曲折，她的故事是成功

克服一切困難。她的猛烈正中要害，顛覆

了亞洲電影中普遍的女性作為受害者的刻

板印象。不難看出，Kheng 是 Jennifer

Lim的另一個自我；Lim 驚人地演出了她的

分身。新加坡出生，在倫敦工作與生活的

Lim 還表示，她一直掙扎著要擺脫刻板的

亞洲角色，「我們不斷受到試鏡邀請，去

扮演不會說英文的移民。 」

然而，Kheng 的寫照是一維的，沒能研

究她生活的其他方面。回憶錄應該記錄生

活，否則將是短暫而瞬逝的，但《翡翠山

之夢》未能解決 Kheng 至今鮮為人知的根

本問題。這部電影是記憶缺失的，忘記了

它的目的是為了解決女性在新加坡早期的

解放問題。是因為 Kheng 將她的堅韌頑強

用在了作為一個妻子和母親的角色上，而

忽略了演員生涯嗎？她如何磨練演技？她

內心深處的需求，欲望和習性是什麼？在

這樣嚴厲的黑暗中，對 Kheng 不止作為演

員，更作為一名女性追求精益求精的好奇

心，被遺憾地駁回，變成令人苦惱的未觸

動的空穴，缺乏了應有的好奇心。