Making its debut at two international film festivals last December, Wee Li Lin's second directorial effort, Forever, comes home this week, adding itself to the limited romantic comedy sub-genre of a chick flick coming out of Singapore. I thought it more to be a tragedy though, considering the episodes revolving around a bizarre love triangle of a New Order proportion, of a woman so delusional and scheming, it's Fatal Attraction done Singapore style sans sex and violence, hitting home through its plenty of identifiable subversive elements, and made all the more terrifying when you learn the antagonist is inspired from someone who actually exist. Oh the horror!

Joanna Dong plays Joey, a high flying executive in what seems to be an amalgamation of all the quasi-government matchmaking agencies here known as the Wedding Education Department (WED), responsible for churning out propaganda videos to show how the Singapore Plan of getting married at the right age at the right time is nothing but leading to eternal bliss (and in fact Li Lin does put us through this in the opening scene!). Little does her boss (Alice Lim) realize that her blue-eyed staff Joey is a closet sociopath whose wardrobe is blue-centric, living in a world of her own after getting smitten during her video making encounter with GIn (Mo Tzu Yi), a music scholar from Taiwan teaching in a local school, where they star as a just-married couple in bridal regalia in a national advertisement.

So begins an obsession stalking of her prey, very adamant in thinking that he IS the man of her dreams, in essence blurring that line between reality and fantasy, made worse of course by that goosebump raising moments each time they call each other "Groomie" or "Bridey", with one party taking it a lot more seriously and emotionally than the other. We shift into second gear when Joey realizes Gin is engaged to the rich lass Cecilia (Sarah Ng), who too realizes the existence of that propaganda video involving her fiancé, so all hell breaks loose with claws unsheathed to inflict serious damage to snag the man they both love. Some guys would love this kind of attention, but to go overboard here like what Joey does, is certainly very creepy, enough to block a phone number after an insane proclamation of love.

Forever doesn't look as lush as the director's first film Gone Shopping, with its fairy tale like moments, rich colours and who-can-resist upmarket fashion in the malls featured. but seemed a little bit more subdued deliberately to fit a narrative which is a little darker in mood and tone, with clean fun clearly being poked at the authorities that be involved with fussing over dwindling national statistics - in today's world the hot button item is of course the tumbling birth rates - and their goal to see that the status quo be maintained by hitting the usual targets set, so that work life can be coasted through with little trouble or question. It's no surprise that most of the more comical moments come from the WED scenes and their disastrous mass activities for eligible singles (I smell spin off), and I was secretly hoping there would be more coming from these supporting characters, especially on the number of sight gags that never fail to crack me up!

The revelation in Forever undeniably belongs to the lead actress Joanna Dong, who is at perfect ease playing that sweet innocent young thing who truly believes in her shot at true love, and that schemer with a glint in her eye, buried beneath her non-threatening demeanour. Her performance can make you laugh at, and cry for at the same time, eliciting sympathy for her hopelessly romantic plight, yet you hiss at her when you see through her true colours revealed. Really the two-faced chameleon in the film where you'd just about want to slap her for her lack of that feminine backbone, yet take pity on her really clueless behaviour in not knowing when to call it quits, and have to succumb to her compulsions of, check this out, serenading outside a window at the wee hours of the night. Dong proves her versatility as well in lending her vocals for the songs featured in the film.

It's no surprise that you'll probably have plenty of fun from the various little commentaries pointed at our society pop up every now and then, ribbing anything from public sector mentalities, caricatures from the school of office politics whom you'll come across at one point or another in life, and behavioral traits that probably had irked screenwriters Li Lin and Silvia Wong, who also serves as producer, to feature as passing remarks foreigners make about locals being negative influencers.

Wee Li Lin may only be two feature films old, but already some signatures begin to show, such as those inevitable moments where snow (or confetti in this case) has to pepper picturesque lip-locking scenes in a fairy tale landscape, themes of unhealthy obsession, and a look at the darker side what and how conditioning had damaged the Singapore psyche, of characters being stuck in and trying to break out of an unhappy course in life. This is a thinking chick flick marked by a remarkable lead actress, and it'll be interesting to see how Li Lin continues to expand her filmography from here. Recommended!

Everyone's heard of the phrase "Always a bridesmaid but never a bride". This Chinese-language, Singapore-made romantic-comedy attempts to tell the tale of a woman who is "always a bride", but also "never the bride". It's an interesting place to start – but be warned, this movie doesn't turn out to be all champagne, bouquets and diamond rings.

I desperately wanted to enjoy this film, and the early scenes do a decent job of setting up the somewhat-original jumping off point for the story. The bureaucratic nature of the WED organization makes for a few good chuckles, with their slogans such as "Loneliness kills; WED saves", advising men to turn up their collars as it looks more attractive, and their use of facial recognition software to determine the compatibility of two would-be partners relatively amusing.

However, it's not long before one quickly ticks off a whole checklist of clichés, contrivances and lazy storytelling tricks often associated with the romantic-comedy genre. The bland and generic translated title of the film should have been my first clue – the original Mandarin title translates directly to ILoveYouLoveYouLoveYou, which, silly as it sounds, works better than Forever. The film quickly drifts farther and farther away from the Democratic Republic of the Plausible, towards the Island of the Ridiculous, before there's no turning back.

Instead of using the most common rom-com trope, which is to set up the leads as fierce rivals and have them quickly fall for each other, this flick settles for the second most common one: one party obsessed and starry-eyed, the other cool and unattainable, set on a collision course with a speed bump in the form of a third party standing in the way.

The characters are all decidedly flat and one note. At first, female lead and former Singapore Idol contestant Joanna Dong seems to be channeling the kooky sweetheart vibe defined by such stars as Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts. However, she quickly leaps right off the deep end, making the odd, peculiar and creepily desperate antics of Sandra Bullock's character in the awful All About Steve look positively restrained. Even that film had the line "If you love someone, set him free; if you have to stalk him, he probably wasn't yours in the first place" – a concept that Joey does not understand, and probably never will.

Keeping a stash of Gin's childhood photographs, creating fantasy PowerPoint presentations for her "wedding" with him, squealing "Iloveyouloveyouloveyou!" into the phone, indulging in idealized and preposterous fantasies of their would-be romance, enacting a gender-flipped Romeo-and-Juliet-style balcony scene outside his house and enlisting the help of Gin's bewildered chamber music students to help her woo him number among Joey's wacko manifestations. I'm glad that an ax didn't somehow wander into frame, because Joey did look like she was intent on having Gin "fall to pieces" in more ways than one. It's a pity as Dong shows potential as a likable actress, but the screenplay does her no favors.

Gin is essentially the perfect man: kind, thoughtful, intelligent, romantic, musical, great with kids, and the son of nice parents – not to mention very handsome. Taiwanese actor-singer Mo Tzu Yi's matinée-idol pulchritude actually becomes one of many nails in the coffin for the movie. Mo valiantly attempts to muster up all the comedic timing he possesses, but the character of Gin doesn't end up being the composed yang to Joey's crazy yin – he just ends up being stiff. When Gin tearfully confides in his mother that he's never been lucky in love, it feels as real as if Bill Gates were to sob about money woes.

The supporting cast provides more laughs than both leads combined, really. Model and first-time film actress Sarah Ng Li-Wen inhabits the role of the sexy, wild and whiny Cecilia with much aplomb, even though the script gives her nothing really to do.

The kids in Gin's chamber music class provide the only semblance of believability, Kenny Gee (unrelated to the saxophonist) is mildly amusing as a Goth-obsessed, rival wedding videographer, and there are surprise cameos from "controversial" pageant princess Ris Low and pre-eminent theater doyen Dr KK Seet – but all this is like trying to flood a desert with a 500 ml bottle of mineral water.

Tonally, the film suffers. It's nowhere near as bad as in much of Jack Neo's work – there was a scene where a character attempts suicide in the middle of his otherwise cheesy and over-the-top comedy I Do I Do – but it is still unable to find a footing. It teeters haphazardly between high-comedy and high-drama and tries to stuff in an element of satire at the same time. The film is also smug, employing visual gags such as parallel messages on a graffiti wall and on a banner hanging in the WED office, but none of it really works. I'm not even going to start on the exploitation of mental health issues for comedy.

Watching these films is a dangerous experience – I was running and trying to avoid the anvils falling from the sky. Subtlety seems like a foreign concept, and Forever ends up feeling like a song with a catchy melody, but with the chorus shouted instead of sung. Yes, the film is definitely not completely awful – watching it felt less like a painful eye infection, and more like a skin rash. It is marginally better than most entries in the increasingly-less-funny stable of romantic comedies from both Hollywood and the local scene, but in the end is more apt as a description of what cringing through the movie felt like, than as its title.

FOREVER is an offbeat romantic comedy from Singapore. I'm no fan of this genre of film-making but I like to watch the Asian examples in order to get a taste of Asian culture (as opposed to American culture which we're constantly being exposed to all day on television). In that respect, FOREVER is a watchable film, made efficiently enough with its story taking place in a variety of locations; it also looks great in high definition.

What a pity, then, that the story itself is so stilted and cheesy. It's a tacky romance about a videographer called Joey who falls in love with a Taiwanese bloke who's due to get married to somebody else. The rest of the movie chronicles Joey's stalking of the subject of her obsession as it gets more and more extreme. Instead of FATAL ATTRACTION, there's no violence here, merely quirkiness, and even time for a happy ending. I'm afraid that the cheesy sentimentality on offer wasn't my cup of tea at all, but for a cultural experience you may want to watch regardless.