Good Goodbye review: Julie Tan, Andie Chen, Tosh Zhang give affecting performances in tough-to-watch cancer drama

Tough to tell a story like this. About people stricken with cancer. Even tougher to watch it.

Fortunately, this Singaporean drama, despite being mushy in parts, isn't pushy.

Okay, it gets corny — balloons keep floating up to the sky, a former crush pops up to play a sentimental song with his guitar — and melodramatic. Especially when one character is revealed to be secretly suffering from the Big C.

But overall, Good Goodbye, built around three stories involving terminally ill patients in a hospital, is restrained, dignified and evenly paced with its personal tales interweaved smoothly. The local actors here showcase themselves well with fine performances.

Your attention is seized by one little girl who thumps them all as she flits between infectious hope and private pain. As Betty, a spunky little fighter with a debilitating brain tumour and a dream to become a comedian via her cancer-jokes show called Tumour Humour in her children's ward, Aster Yeow is a great find who doesn't grate but moves you with her physical decline. You actually think she's really losing the ability to speak as the illness catches up with her.

“It's a standup comedy. I have to stand up,” she tells her desperately protective dad (Andie Chen), trying every means to find a cure for his child, as she struggles to get up on stage. You'll shed a heart-breaking tear.

Heartbreaking: Andie Chen and Aster Yeow in a scene from Good Goodbye.

Director-story creator Daniel Yam (Wonder Boy, 4 Love) explains in the production notes that this is an “anthology film about pallative care that weaves together three deeply touching stories, each revolving around the central theme of letting go.”

Which means that while the afflicted people seem calm in accepting their fates, this primarily upbeat flick is more about the loved ones around them who need to cope with the strain of eventuality. There's no miracle cure for young or old. Just the stark inevitability of death and grief.

In this, Yam fleshes out a really relatable character in the form of Ah Zheng (Ah Boys To Men's Tosh Zhang), a male nurse struggling to cope with losing the people he cares for. “My heart feels unbearably painful. Like I have lost a part of myself,” he reveals to the positive-minded medical social worker, Cindy (That Girl In Pinafore’s Julie Tan).

Any caregiver would know the emotional stress of Ah Zheng, who falls for the chirpy Cindy, pepping up others with gusto about the urgency of now while harbouring a less cheerful circumstance for herself.

Meanwhile, an elderly hawker (Wet Season’s Golden Horse Award nominee Yang Shi Bin) is overwhelmed by running his fried rice stall and diligently taking care of his grandson (Ajoomma’s Shane Pow), a self-absorbed drug addict just released from prison. The fella is on the verge of relapsing while being unaware of his self-sacrificing grandpa's lung cancer.

But you don’t resent the dude because nobody overacts here. Everybody seems right for their roles.

Tough to watch: Shane Pow and Yang Shi Bin in a scene from Good Goodbye.

Here, you wonder whether director Yam, gathering such a competent cast, could have been more ambitious. If this was, say, a Japanese pic, there'd be a single poignant moment to define the human condition. A The Farewell approach would produce astute comedy.

Yam's movie is a simple, straightforward narrative, an effectively handled well-meaning one about the importance of lives well lived and loved with significant meaning right at the end.

Making it perhaps a bit too sanguine and safe.

But the man has shown with Good Goodbye that he can draw refreshingly good performances out of his local actors.

And his next Singaporean film will surely be something to look out for. (3.5/5 stars)

Photos: mm2 Entertainment