Singapore film about forbidden love between migrant workers will make you ‘feel, learn and think a little’

Singapore — Media outlet AsiaOne caught up with Adrian Pang and Michelle Saram earlier last month inside a SGD27 million Good Class Bungalow (GCB) where they were in the midst of going through their scenes with local director Sean Ng.

Pang and Saram along with Filipino actress Rhen Escaño and Vietnamese actor Ho Thanh Trung are starring in the upcoming movie named Sunday about the forbidden love between domestic helper Lily and Vietnamese busboy Minh in Singapore.

Saram, 46 and Pang, 55 play the glamourous Lee and owners of the mansion where Lily works in, who are experiencing a difficult time in their marriage.

Pang told AsiaOne: “There’s a lot of passive-aggressive tension between the couple. Once the cracks start to become uncontrollable, they start to really get at each other. There’s one interesting scene that we shot on the first day, where it was a Chinese New Year lohei scene where we had all these guests and underlying that, there’s this aggression between them.”

He added that he was drawn to the “universal message” in the movie.

“I think the script has something to say. It’s very much set in the Singapore context, and yet, it’s got a very universal message. I think it’s very resonant to anybody and everybody. I think it’s a film that deserves to travel.”

For Saram, she was moved by how passionate Ng and his team were about the story. “The best stories make you feel a little, learn a little, think a little about something. And I think this has all those elements,” she explained.

The director and the crew went down to Orchard Road on Sundays to speak to domestic helpers there, to prepare for the movie.

He said: “We interviewed and asked domestic helpers for any kind of stories regarding love and relationships that they have. It’s one of those grey areas, frowned-upon things that Singapore employers wish, for the domestic helpers to not have relationships, and it’s something that we wanted to address head-on.

“And there are actually a lot of interesting love stories out there. A lot of them were so scared, they were, like, ‘My employer won’t see this right?’ They were so scared to speak up. We managed to convince a lot of them that it was a safe space and we were just doing research.”

Sunday is now in post-production and is scheduled to open in cinemas in 2022./TISG