What a viewSamantha Tan’s short film Ally Chia shows the Malaysian actor and director is one to watch
- Shot in a single day by an all-female crew, the film is now showing on Amazon Prime Video
- It follows a young chef trying to juggle work, a relationship and the expectations of an overbearing mother
Yes, it’s true, a woman’s place is in the kitchen … as long as she is not just cooking, but also writing, producing, directing and starring in her own film.
Take a bow Samantha Tan, creator of Amazon Prime Video’s short film Ally Chia.
A young Malaysian chef, Ally, has just scored the biggest order her business has ever had, feeding the crew of a late-night location shoot in Los Angeles, in the United States. Having prepared the feast in her home kitchen, she is about to set off across town with the comestibles when her boyfriend intervenes with other, more raunchy, parental filter-worthy plans. The boyfriend is black, which, like his very existence, is a fact concealed from Ally’s hectoring mother, who nags and gripes by Skype from across the ocean. It’s all decidedly downhill from there, with multiplying problems threatening to make a crisis out of Ally’s crowning achievement.
Ally Chia can be found among numerous outstanding shorts, as it were, in the Amazon cupboard, but this one in particular has the look of a series teaser. Whether a larger project develops remains to be seen, but it would be foolish to bet on Chia, or Tan, both plainly ambitious, having nothing else to say.