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As one of the most critically celebrated and analysed Malaysian auteurs, Yasmin Ahmad (1959−2009) addressed the complicated postcolonial politics of Malaysia’s multiculturalism in her six feature films. This article examines the relationship between her cinematic imagination of Malaysian multiculturalism and her frequent inter-Asian pop culture referencing. These references initiate on-screen crosscultural dialogues that upend ethnic, gender and class stereotypes. Aestheticizing experiences of partial intelligibility, Yasmin’s audio-visual integration of multilingualism reanimates historical creolization as unanticipated intimacies suppressed by Malaysia’s postcolonial multiculturalism. Questioning popular interpretations of her characters’ relationships as ‘interracial’, this reanimation of creolization does not celebrate the coalescence of an overarching Malaysian or Asian identity (or cinema), but rather proposes more affectionate modes of re-conceptualizing crosscultural relations and initiating neighbourly dialogue.

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