‘Mother Bhumi’ Review: Fan Bingbing Carries a Magical Realist Malaysian Drama That Intrigues More Than It Captivates

There’s a powerful movie buried somewhere in writer-director Chong Keat Aun’s period drama, Mother Bhumi, which premiered in competition at the Tokyo Film Festival. The problem in this beautifully shot but rather murky affair, which attempts to combine recent history, ethnic struggles and magical realism into one troubled family story, is that we never quite grasp all the stakes at hand, nor do we know what to actually believe.

This doesn’t mean that Chong’s fifth stab at the helm should be written off so easily. It features a compelling lead turn from Chinese megastar Fan Bingbing, who strays far from the glamour of her usual roles to play a woman combatting government land seizures and black magic on the borderland between Thailand and Malaysia. It’s also filled with striking visuals (courtesy of cinematographer Leung Ming Kai) that capture the beauty of a region in which different ethnicities (Chinese, Thai, Malaysian) and religions (Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam) have coexisted for decades.

But Mother Bhumi often suggests more than it says, with Chong keeping the viewer at a distance by filming scenes in fixed medium or long shots that favor the surrounding atmosphere over drama. We never fully understand the politics of the territory, which is dished out in snippets of dialogue or news broadcasts without ever clarifying itself. And then at some point, the movie turns into a full-on tale of modern-age sorcery, shifting from its historical roots into an arthouse genre flick replete with fire and demons.

The unique setting is certainly one of the film’s best features: In the lush Bujang Valley, farmers live in the long shadow of the 1909 Anglo-Siamese Treaty (also known as the Bangkok Treaty), in which Thailand ceded a portion of its southern land to Malaysia, which was then a British protectorate. Less than a century later, the Malaysian government is claiming back farms that have been held by families for decades, driving them out of the country for good.

Fan stars as Hong Im, a Chinese widow who toils in the surrounding rice paddies by day, while at night she performs exorcisms and other rituals to help neighbors deal with past and present traumas. She also helps them deal with their land issues, bringing their deeds to a local official who once worked for her late husband, Teong. But those claims keep getting rejected, mostly for phony reasons, as the region is gradually emptied of its long-time residents.

This is the intriguing backdrop for a narrative that never really grips us, even if Chong has an artful way of depicting Hong Im’s lifestyle, which oscillates between real-world issues and religious wizardry. In one scene the woman is waiting around a dingy shopping mall to argue a land claim; in another she’s helping two young schoolgirls who have been possessed by some kind of evil spirit and have gone full Linda Blair on their classmates.

It’s hard to know whether Hong Im has actual healing powers or not — that is until a last act that shifts from history to full-on magic, introducing a witch doctor who may have cast a spell on Teong before he died, as well as other supernatural twists that aren’t always credible.

Those elements are mixed in with stories of rape, misogyny and ancestral theft that have occurred over generations, but the blend isn’t easy to follow and Chong’s message tends to get lost in the confusion. A major plot point involving a water buffalo that may be the reincarnation of a loved one doesn’t resonate in the way the director intends, and Mother Bhumi winds up losing its grasp on reality in the final stretch.

In a role that has her covered in sweat and grime, writhing on the floor as she exorcises the locals, and, at one point, singing a ballad in front of a giant phallus, Fan gives her all in a performance that’s definitely not in line with her typical repertoire. A few of her scenes feel over-the-top, and then some, but the actress does carry the movie from start to finish, playing a hardworking mother to a teenage daughter (Nataslie Hsu) and son (Bai Run-yin) who suffer from years of hardship and political unrest.

One telling sequence early on has the children studying in a classroom featuring depictions of Mohammed, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha and Confucius, highlighting to what extent the Bujang Valley had been a melting pot of cultures and religions. Chong does manage to capture some of that original historical flavor on screen, but his film ultimately slips away from us when it chooses esotericism over realism, making this wrenching story of trauma and strife lose its staying power.