Ah Girl, holding its North American Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), ultimately turns a traumatic youth experience into an intimate and observant story tinged with sadness and confusion.
It is quite hard to imagine that “Don’t grow up that fast. Adults always lie” are words uttered by a 7-year-old girl to a swaddled baby. Still, the punchy, premature wisdom that informs her childhood in a broken family is precisely what Ang Geck Geck Priscilla seeks to capture through her bittersweet drama Ah Girl.
A Singaporean filmmaker known for empathetic, character-driven storytelling across film, television, and commercials, Ang Geck Geck Priscilla draws from her own childhood memories of the 1990s and weaves them into her debut feature. But it never feels like a biographical memo; more likely, it is a fervent retrospective of an ordinary girl who grows up amid familial conflict, friendship, and inevitable departure.
Swee Swee (nicknamed “Ah Girl”, played by the exceptional Xuanjing Ong) is a precocious girl with distinctive sparse eyebrows, monolids, and blunt bangs. At home, she moves between the houses of her fickle father, who is attracted to plump women, and her young, dolled-up mother (Carrie Wong), who flirts with a rich older man for a more stable life. At school, she tries to understand what language means for her identity while figuring out her feelings towards a smart-aleck boy with glasses.
Alongside Ah Girl is her 5-year-old younger sister, Ah Tian (Sydney Wong), and their irritated grandmother who cares for them both. The siblings care deeply for each other, though they sometimes have different attitudes toward their constantly bickering, separated parents. When asked which side they prefer, Ah Tian answers the opposite of Ah Girl. This leads to completely different futures for the sisters: their mother takes Ah Girl to stay with a strange uncle, whereas Ah Tian is retained by her father, who schemes to send her overseas with an adoptive family.
Adults assume the kids know nothing, yet Ah Girl has witnessed and absorbed all of this. In the face of injustice, she tries almost everything she can to resist it: crying, arguing, struggling, and even devising a trick to avoid what is meant to happen. Through her resistance against parental discipline, the film presents two different worlds of understanding — the adult’s and the child’s, reflected in traumatised family dynamics often seen in East Asian households.
Ang Geck Geck Priscilla shows incredible skill in directing child performers, exemplified by her equal, respectful angle when observing her characters. In particular, the camera is consistently positioned at the same height as the child actors, avoiding the visual difference that might create a dominant gaze. She captures the dramatic, even brutal scenes completely through Ah Girl’s angle. Far from forbidding a holistic view of the incidents, this approach gives the character greater credibility and draws the audience deeper into her innermost feelings as an innocent minor dealing with dramas one shouldn’t have to experience at her age.
Indeed, relying so heavily on this young character could be risky because if the performance doesn’t carry the film, it wouldn’t really work. However, with Ong’s immense talent and natural intuition, she proves that she is the best fit for the role of Ah Girl. From heartfelt pleasure to slight confusion, from involuntary grievance to accumulated anger, Ong finds the sweet spot in navigating distinct emotions, contributing to one of the year’s most impressive child performances.
Unlike many of the same old stories that lean toward a direct portrayal of suffering, Ah Girl almost feels like pure lemonade that sometimes tastes bittersweet. Each time you squeeze a little more juice, its flavours change. Its intention is not to criticise anyone, but to piece together a fractured puzzle and understand, from the heart, why and how this has become part of childhood itself, with empathy, care, and love.
Elsewhere, the film also hints at several socio-political undercurrents. The brief glimpse of the memorial brings back the nation’s painful history involving Japan, echoed in their grandma’s simple wish to go on a trip there. Additionally, the Chinese title translates as “Chewing Gum Girl”. This relates to the storyline in which Ah Girl sells gum to the pupils at her school, something that has been banned from import since 1992 due to growing concerns over public cleanliness. The chewing gum her mother brought from Japan can be seen both as an act of rebellion against her surroundings (and this, of course, has a more personal reason) and as a mark of time that leaves a tiny yet indelible dot in one’s memory.
This adds a richer layer to Ah Girl, marked not only by an individual’s understanding of the world but also by multiple currents and ideologies that shape it. Although the film revolves around a coming-of-age girl and renders her perspective a foundational starting point, Ang Geck Geck Priscilla clearly steps beyond this perspective and attempts to draw a fuller picture of the social realities of her time.
Ah Girl ultimately turns a traumatic youth experience into an intimate and observant story tinged with sadness and confusion. Anchored by Ong’s remarkable performance, it feels less like a straightforward reconciliation with one’s younger self, but more like a peaceful, sincere, and universal conversation with anyone who has ever dealt with an imperfect childhood.
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