WHAT would happen if eccentrics collided? A big mess perhaps, or probably, a fairy tale romance.
Lips to lips, a Malaysian comedy flick by Amir Muhammad, features stories on love, unexpected meetings, fetishes, and accidental deaths.
James (James Lee) mourns over his grandmother who died after choking on an apple. Depressed and left alone, James becomes a suicidal freak as he attempts to kill himself in strange ways. He hangs himself but does not know how to knot a rope. He tries to jump from a high building but is afraid of heights.
Persistent in ending his life, he decides to walk in the middle of the road hoping to be hit by a car. Suddenly, Anitha (Anitha Abdul Hamid) comes at full speed on her way, running for the crime of killing his fiancé Ernie (Ernie Chen) whom she caught having sex with a plastic-doll.
Seeing James, she stops the car in time and goes out and yells at the former for being such an idiot, and then drives off.
Unknown to Anitha, she leaves her purse on the road and James finds it. He sets aside his plan of ending his life and sets off to return the purse. His search for Anitha starts his weird yet funny encounter with interesting people like a father-figure who is a shoe thief and a young bookshop attendant who is very much in love with his dead girlfriend.
James finally finds Anitha and returns the purse. The film ends as they take turns biting an apple.
Lips to Lips tries to capture hilarity of ordinary happenings, from day to day encounters with strangers to comic love at first sight.
Known as the first Malaysian digital film, Muhammad expertly spiced the movie with witty dialogues and incorporated outlandish characters like Ako, a three-testicled villain hired by a gangster running after James.
The Malaysian movie is one of the films featured in the recent 2002 ASEAN Film Festival held at the Tanghalang Leandro V. Locsin of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. The three-day festival was part of the celebration of the ASEAN’s 35th anniversary. Other films screened were Moonhunter (Thailand) by Bhandit Rittakol, Demolition Frog (Malaysia) by Linus Chung Yao Fui, Whispering Sands (Indonesia) by Triveni Achnas, Bullet Days (Philippines) by Sari Iluch Dalena, and Bridge to Heaven (Philippines) by Richard Benipayo.
