Ice Kacang Puppy Love

Ice Kacang Puppy Love is a Malaysian made Chinese movie that was released on April 15, 2010. At the time of the release of the movie, the Malaysian Chinese-language movie scene was still lagging far behind compared with other more developed Chinese movie markets such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and China. The film was cast in Ipoh and Penang, with a brief final scene in Kuala Lumpur.

Plot

The story was set in the 1980s in Tronoh, a small town in Perak. 20 year-old plus Botak is the younger of a Chinese coffeeshop owner's two sons. A reserved, quiet young lad with prickly hair, having being shaved during childhood (thus gaining his nickname Botak, which means bald in Malay), he bears a secret admiration towards Fighting-Fish, daughter of a char kuey teow seller, Yue Feng, who rents a stall in the same coffeeshop. However, he was never bold enough to confess his love towards her and only conveyed it through drawing portraits of her.

Chew Anqi (周安琪) entered Botak's life when he was still a kid, when Yue Feng sought refuge with Botak's mother after could not withstand physical abuse by her husband. This resulted in Anqi (named after 'Angel') often being teased as being fatherless by another childhood friend, a bully yet coward to stronger forces, Ma Linfan, son of parents who wrote illegal bets. As children, Anqi, Ma Linfan and 'African' (later called Prince Charming in adulthood), another childhood friend, often competed playing marbles (bakuli/buah guli) or fighting fish with each other, which the end result would always be Anqi winning. There was once when Ma Linfan teased her and ended up being spanked and clawed by her, thus giving her a strong, fierce personality, and because she wanted to model herself after fierce fighting fish, hence the nickname Fighting-Fish. Whenever she was upset, she would eat ais kacang (spelt as Ice Kacang for the movie) together with Botak, or idle away by the river chatting with him. She would always say that when she grew up, she would return to Penang to look for her father and move to a faraway place, which Botak desired not to realise. As a 20 year-old something adult, she was in a cold relationship with her mother, blaming her as the main cause for being 'fatherless'.

Ma Linfan (马麟帆), frustrated at losing to Fighting-Fish each time in fighting fish duels, decided to steal hers, but was caught red-handed and escaped. The second time, which could have been a success, he ended up with a tussle with Fighting-Fish, which had her brushing against him on the lower bodies (suspectedly caused him to have an erection). He was so intrigued at having the sort of feeling and because talk of sex was quite taboo those days, he thought he was in love with her and tried to win her love by all means.

Ma Libing (马丽冰), the younger sister of Ma Linfan, was in secret love with Botak. Throughout the story, Ma Libing was a quiet girl and was often seen holding a packet of iced barley drink (thus the nickname Barley-Bing) whenever she went. She chanced upon Botak's love letter to Fighting-Fish in her brother's room and was upset on reading it and sought to win his love with even more determination. The letter somehow ended up with Yue Feng, who then knew of Botak's secret admiration and later discovered Botak's portraits of her in his room.

After a heated quarrel with her mother over her disapproval of her wanting to marry another man, Fighting-Fish travelled to Penang to look for her father, accompanied by Botak. They arrived at her old home at Chew Jetty (姓周桥), a neighbourhood of wooden houses on water, occupied by Chinese families with the surname Chew (周 zhōu), only to discover that her father now operates an illegal gambling den and had remarried with a 5 year-old son and an unborn. The reunion was disrupted with a raid by the police. Botak, Fighting-Fish and her father managed to escape, but she realized the predicament that her mother was in over 10 years ago and sought to mend ties with her, even expressing her desire to further studies in Singapore.

Botak went after her on the day of her departure, bringing a packet of ais kacang and the unread love letter. During the journey, he was met with two accidents but was only bruised from head to toe. He handed the packet to Fighting-Fish, moving her to tears (she had also discovered Botak's portraits of her during the night before). In the haste, Botak also forgot to hand the letter to her and left the scene drenched (apparently the heavens were moved as well). Botak's younger sister submitted one of Botak's portraits to a drawing competition, which won the first prize, even appearing in newspapers. When Botak found out, he ran away in tears, unwilling to embrace the fact that he had hesitated to confess his love to Fighting-Fish. Towards the end of the scene, all of the young characters had left the town, each on their own career paths, with most of them probably in Kuala Lumpur. The finale showed Botak, now grown longer hair and has a girlfriend, at a pedestrian crossing at a traffic light junction, unknown that Fighting-Fish was also nearby. They both walked in different directions then.