It’s hard not to get choked up (at least a little, if you’re human) when the credits come and you’re left reflecting on your own life at the end of Daylight Savings.   Remarkable film, awesome performances, and a startling balance of lightheartedness and emotional depth makes Daylight Savings a hit sequel to Surrogate Valentine.   In the prequel, Danny Boyle’s film revolved around a sad sack musician love-struck with a girl seemingly eons out of his league.  You felt pity, but nothing more than that for Goh Nakamura.  With Daylight Savings evolves a far different Goh, one who has matured and toughened up — a Goh who still quite doesn’t know what he wants in life, but puts himself out there in search of it regardless of what he ends up with.

Goh Nakamura is a singer, writer, and actor.   His previous movie, Surrogate Valentine, drew rave reviews, including one in the New York Times about the witty and likeable, but awkward way in which his lines falls so naturally with the moment and context.

Goh is also a beautiful singer, and it showed as he treated the VAFF afterparty audience to a selection of his songs from Surrogate Valentine and Daylight Savings.

Yea-Ming Chen is a Taiwanese American singer who is in an emerging Indie rock band, Dreamdate. What was amazing about Daylight Savings is that both these actors are not professionally trained, but were discovered at other film festivals.  Although heavily scripted, the film relied entirely on the chemistry between these two actors who had rehearsed and played out their lines together in public spaces like stories and bars to ensure the spontaneity and naturalness of their characters.

Reporting for Gung Haggis, this is Allan Cho