ARTICLE
Breaking the Typecasting Cycle in ‘4Love’.
By Flora / 30 Nov 2016 (Wednesday)
Director Sam Loh strongly believes in not typecasting his actors in movie anthology 4Love. The third film in the four short stories lineup, Loh’s film, titled ‘Love. Temptation’, explores the infidelity from the woman’s point of view which stars Shane Pow, Oon Shu An and Louis Wu.
Oon plays the air steward’s (Wu) wife who has an affair with her company’s head photographer (Pow), but things get ugly when she realises she is now pregnant but unsure whose baby it is.
“I can finally play a good man,” said Wu at the movie’s press conference on Monday. “Normally, the roles that I’ve played so far are more on the ‘bad boy’ image, this is my first time playing a good man who is also a loving husband.” Pow, on the other hand, played the young and handsome man who falls deeply in love with Oon’s character - a rather fresh performance from Pow, who had many years of experience on Channel 8 drama series.
“It was somewhat intentional to give them new and different roles,” said Loh, the director behind erotic films ‘Lang Tong’ and the upcoming ‘Siew Lup’.
He added: “You may have seen a lot of this actor in a certain role but in real life, they are quite different. I don’t like to typecast actors. I believe they are able to try a range of characters and roles…I want to move away from it.”
The other short films in the omnibus picture include Raihan Halim’s ‘Love. Destiny’ starring Maxi Lim and Cheryl Wee; Gilbert Chan’s ‘Love. Extreme’ starring Terence Then, Jonathan Cheok and Silver Ang; and Daniel Yam’s ‘Love, Remember’ starring Joshua Tan and Hayley Woo.
(Watch the trailer for '4Love' here!)
Halim’s film is a sweet love story between two individuals who conversed through a book in the library. He too wants to give actors a chance to play different roles instead of being pigeonholed in the same or similar part each time.
“I was very hesitant (to cast Maxi) because I kept seeing him as the Ah Boys To Men (ABTM) guy, but people kept telling me otherwise. There is just so much in our consciousness that Maxi means Aloysius (Lim’s role in ABTM), people kept remembering that he is the mummy’s boy but there’s more to this guy. This role is not going to change his life, but I just want to make sure that he plays a variation as an actor. That’s very important to me.”
He added: “It’s same with Cheryl, I told her I was not going to have her play anything similar to her Mata Mata role, but to put her as a durian seller and I’m very glad she’s game for it.”
4Love opens InCinemas 1 Dec 2016!