SYNOPSIS
What’s softest… is a glimpse of queer parenthood in Singapore, where such families are illegitimate under the eyes of the law. The hybrid documentary film combines interviews with a constructed communal space for play and imagination. Taking its title from Ursula K. Le Guin’s rendition of the Dao De Jing, the film gathers sensibilities of the natural world, Eastern cosmology, and interdependence to present queerhood as an open field of possibility, one brimming with life that is to come.
REVIEW
Singaporean visual artist Poh Charmaine's What's softest in the world rushes and runs over what's hardest in the world. artfully melds an ethnographic study of queer families in Singapore with a collective vision of safe spaces. The film is constructed around two key elements: audio interviews and imaginative visual representations. The audio component features intimate conversations that unveil the complex experiences and emotions of LGBTQ+ individuals raising families in a nation where only heterosexual unions are legally recognized. These raw, unfiltered voices provide a poignant backdrop to the film's visual narrative. Visually, the film presents these vulnerable families in imagined environments where they can exist most naturally and comfortably. Poh employs delicate out-of-focus effects and translucent veils, creating ethereal images that stand in stark contrast to the harsh realities described in the interviews. This juxtaposition amplifies the film's emotional resonance and underscores the disparity between aspiration and reality. By realizing and visualizing these families' aspirations, even within the realm of cinema, the film becomes an act of resistance and radical imagination. It offers a starting point for new possibilities and change, echoing the profound meaning behind the famous verse from the Tao Te Ching that inspired the film's title.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
Made at a time when the definition of family was rising in prominence as a source of contention in Singapore society, the film presents the domestic life of queer people as a site for contemplation. Gathering four sets of parents, four children, and two individuals to form an extended, fluid network of kinship, the film interweaves various narratives that range from the quotidian to philosophical ideas of fate and nature.
