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News Article
Here's the Bod Squad
The Malaysian action film Mendam Berahi is said to take after Charlie's Angels.
But its three models-turned-actresses say they are more than just eye candy.
The Straits Times, 14 March 2002
Suhaila Sulaiman
One is a tomboy, the other a femme fatale and the third a girl next door. But
they all have flawless skin, luxurious hair and supermodel bodies. And as the
formula goes, they all kick men's butts. American television first came up with
the idea of a sexy, crime-fighting trio of women in the 1970s with the Charlie's
Angels series. Memories of them remained so strong that Hollywood put them on
the big screen in 2000. Not surprisingly, Hong Kong got into the act with a
small-screen telemovie and a series.
And now Malaysian cinema has come up with its own answer to Charlie's Angels.
They are Shaleen Cheah, 24; Rita Rudaini Mokhtar, 26; and Indonesian Tracy
Trinita, 22. Their action-packed feature film Mendam Berahi (The Ship of
desire), directed by Malaysia's Z. Lokman, opens here, across the Causeway and
in Brunei on March 28. It sails into the Philippines and Indonesia on June 1.
At an interview at Causeway Point's Warna Ria cafe on Tuesday, the stunning
Cheah denied that her first movie is yet another carbon copy of the Hollywood
version, starring Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore. Nor is it a blatant
rip-off of the Hong Kong tele-movie, which had Christy Chung, Annie Wu and Kelly
Lin as the three agents.
Cheah, a final-year business administration student at Universiti Putra Malaysia,
who is of Chinese, Thai and Indian descent, said: "It just so happens that
Mendam Berahi is an action flick and that the good guys are us girls. As soon as
we started filming, people were already going, 'Oh, it's the Malaysian version
of Charlie's Angels.' Okay, so that's good for marketing, but it was targetted
from the beginning as a pure action film."
Produced by Malasia's Metrowealth Movies Production, the plot of the RM$1.8
million film revolves around a ship named Mendam Berahi ordered to be built by
Malaccan aristocrat Laksamana Khoja Hassan for his wife-to-be, a princess of
the Majapahit dynasty. During the invasion and attack by the Portuguese armada in
1511, the nobleman and his family used the ship to try to escape but it sank
with all its treasures.
Five hundred years later, Madame X (played by veteran actress Jasmine Deo)
assigns her team of special agents, Edsa, Mimi and Tania, to locate the lost
ship. But, of course, the girls have to compete with rival agents.
Soft-spoken Rita, who plays a smooth-operating man-killer named Mimi, admitted
that she had been seduced by the role the minute she read the script. A model
who has appeared in many ads for Maybelline, and Pepsi, she said in Malay:
"People
whom I meet always tell me that I am too quiet and soft. Mimi is
different - she's complicated while I'm really a simple girl, so that's the
challenge for me."
Cheah, who plays Edsa, a martial-arts expert, said: "She's a lot like me in the
sense that she's serious about getting her work done and that she's the tomboy
of the three."
While Mendam Berahi is the first feature film for the two Malaysians, it is the
third for Indonesia's Tracy Trinita, who was too busy with other engagements in
Jakarta to join her co-stars in promoting the movie. Trinita had a small part in
an independent Australian film, Frank's Dream, and also landed a role as a
dancer in Ben Stiller's latest comedy Zoolander, which has been banned in
Singapore.
In Mendam Berahi, the Elite Model Look winner plays the slick agent Tania, who's
also a young mother in search of her lost daughter, Nini. Cheah said she and her
co-stars put their modelling background to good use in their cross-over from the
catwalk to the set.
"Modelling and acting are both industries which have you become someone else
when you are on the jon," She said. "On the catwalk, you are not yourself in the
way that you need attitude to bring out the character of the clothes. The same
goes for movies, only the process is longer."
The three girls were also required to take taekwondo and karate lessons to get
into character. Cheah, who swims and runs regularly, said, with a smile, "Aiyoh,
we were bruised and pretty much sore all over. But no broken limbs."
Mendam Berahi claims to be a sexy action flick but its Malaysian roots are
obvious in more ways than one.
"It's a family movie, too. So there's nothing sleazy, I assure you - we just
dress the part," said Cheah.
"People shouldn't be so quick to judge those who have looks as having no talent,
" she said. "And, besides, acting is a craft that gets better with age and
experience."
Related Site:
Cinema Online's Mendam Berahi Page (with Trailers) |
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