Meet Lulu – Singapore’s Chinese ‘Borat’

Gaudy clothes, faded eyebrow tattoos, big hair, loud and always on the hustle. That in a sentence describes Lulu, the titular mainland Chinese protagonist in the new Singaporean comedy Lulu The Movie.

The character, spun off from a popular television satire show and known locally as “Singapore’s favourite PRC [mainland Chinese]”, may at first glance seem like just another bit of easy humour at the expense of mainlanders’ quirky behaviour overseas. But its creator – veteran Singaporean actress Michelle Chong – is adamant the opposite is true.

Partly filmed as a Borat-style ‘mockumentary’, the film chronicles the life of Lulu, a Shanghainese woman who struggles with her new life in Singapore where she works as a karaoke hostess and tries to win the heart of a man she met online before being recruited to host a TV fashion show.

Chong, who stars as Lulu and wrote, produced and directed the film, said the light-hearted comedy highlights the struggles of newcomers to the foreigner-dependent country, where as in Hong Kong, immigration, in particular the influx of mainland Chinese, remains a hot-button issue.

“I suppose you can say she is a stereotype, but she is not evil or mean,” Chong, 39, told This Week in Asia in a phone interview.

Hong Kong residents, mainland people have similarities – and also big differences

“It’s a light hearted comedy and at the same time the character is relevant to some bigger social themes... It’s a funny way at looking at the lives of migrants, not just in Singapore, but increasingly everywhere in the world,” Chong said.