The
sand is from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Cambodian. The workers are from Bangladesh
and China. However, the crime and the film are definitely Singaporean. This
season, all Netflix awards buzz focuses on The Irishman, but they are
also carrying all of Singapore’s Oscar hopes and dreams. The local construction
industry might not have been overly thrilled about it, but Singapore opted for Yeo
Siew Hua’s A Land Imagined as its official international feature film submission
for the upcoming Academy Awards.
Lok
is a massively jaded cop, who is almost as surprised by his efforts to find
missing Chinese migrant worker Wang Bi-cheng, as the dodgy land reclamation
company that employed him. Frankly, they think they did well by Wang when they
kept him on as a driver at half-pay when his arm was injured in an industrial
accident. It was during that time Wang befriended Ajit, one of the Bangladeshi
workers, who also mysteriously disappeared.
As
we see in flashbacks, Lok’s investigation of Wang’s disappearance retraces the
steps the Chinese worker’s efforts to find his Bangladeshi friend. In fact, Lok
starts to feel an affinity for Wang, due to their mutual insomnia. Clearly, the
company is up to its neck in shading dealings, but Mindy, the goth femme fatale
managing the neighboring internet parlor is decidedly no angel either.
Eventually,
the film takes a rather Robbe-Grillet-like turn, as the personas of the cop and
the subject of his investigation start to blend together. Yet, in many ways Land
Imagined is a noir in the B. Traven tradition. The only thing more
dangerous than the crooked system for the trapped laborers are their own character
failings.
Pete
Yu is convincingly gaunt and hollowed-out inside as Lok and Liu Xiaoyi creates
a compelling portrait of emasculated resentment and intensity as Wang. Yet, as
is nearly always the case in good film noirs, the most interested parts are
reserved for the colorful supporting cast. Guo Yue (a.k.a. Luna Kwok, probably
best known for Kaili Blues) takes a star-making turn as the seductive
but almost anti-social Mindy. Smoldering temptress roles are rarely this
complicated. Likewise, Ishtiaque Zico is terrific as Ajit, especially in his
final, devastating scene.
A
Land Imagined probably
has no realistic hope for an Oscar nomination, because the third act will
absolutely befuddle Academy voters, who prefer their films to be as simplistic
as their politics. Regardless, the more aesthetically adventurous will appreciate
it dreamy vibe and the striking cinematography of Hideho Urata (who also shot
the science fiction masterwork, The Clone Returns Home). Highly recommended
for fans of postmodern noirs, A Land Imagined now streams on Netflix.