Stranger Eyes: Lee Kang-sheng is Watching

When it comes to trade-offs between security and personal liberty, Singapore reliably opts for security. Indeed, surveillance cameras are common sight in the city-state. Yet, there is no footage of Little Bo’s abduction—or is there? At first, her parents hope the mysterious DVDs left under their door might yield a clue to her whereabouts. However, they increasingly feature footage of her father, Junyang at his most embarrassing moments. Somewhat logically, Junyang starts stalking his stalker, hoping he leads to some answers in director-screenwriter Yeo Siew Hua’s Stranger Eyes, which opens today in New York.

Junyang blames his mother Shuping, because during the brief time she called, he lost sight of his daughter. Whatever it was, she could have told him later, since she lives with Junyang and his wife Peiying. Of course, Peiying took it hard, obsessively reviewing all their recent video of Litle Bo and anymore they could get crowd-sourced. Initially, the DVDs the mystery stalker left were welcome, but they soon took a dark, intrusive turn.

Thanks to surveillance cameras, Det. Zheng identifies their neighbor Lao Wu as the stalker, but he cannot tie him to Bo’s abducton. Nevertheless, Junyang assumes Wu must be involved or holding back relevant video, so he returns the favor, developing an unhealthy fixation on the obsessive Wu.

That all makes Stranger Eyes sound more thrillerish than it is. Instead, Yeo prefers contemplate voyeurism and obsession in the age of omniscient surveillance and hyper-online over-sharing. Frankly, the audience hardly has any better sense of Junyang’s personality than if we were watching him through security cameras. Instead, Lee Kang-sheng (Tsai Ming-liang’ longtime collaborator) more successfully hints at the complexities of Wu, who emerges as a figure of sadness rather than menace.

Submitted by Singapore: A Land Imagined

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.

NYAFF ’19: Zombiepura

There are reasons to think a military base would be a good place to be when the zombie apocalypse breaks out. They have plenty of guns and medicine stock-piled and a guard duty schedule is already in place. Alas, the survival rate will still be pretty low for the Singaporean soldiers in Jacen Tan’s Zombiepura, which screens during the 2019 New York Asian Film Festival.

This film has been billed as Singapore’s first zombie film—and the tiny archipelago nation is off to a decent start. However, the main character does not wear so well. Corporal Tan Kayu is a slacker reservist largely lacking charm as well as discipline. Ironically, when he tries to fake conjunctivitis to get out of drills, it will put him squarely in the eye of the zombie hurricane (that is a metaphorical zombie hurricane, not a literal SyFy Channel movie zombie hurricane).

Together with Sgt. Lee Siao-on, the son of the regiment commander, and Susie, the daughter of the canteen caterer, Tan will have to fight his way out of the infirmary and avoid the zombies shuffling all over the base. It will be a challenge for Tan and the by-the-book Lee to put aside their differences, given their history of Gomer Pyle-style antagonism. Frankly, the zombies are probably working as a more cohesive unit. Thanks to muscle memory and conditioned responses, the zombie soldiers continue to stand guard and make patrols. More usefully, they stand stock-still whenever the national anthem is played.

Jacen Tan deserves credit for developing some amusing new twists to the established zombie conventions. However, his characterization could still use a little work. There is not a darned thing about Tan Kayu that is appealing or interesting, but we are forced to spend nearly the entire film with him. Likewise, despite Chen Xiuhuan’s bright screen presence, there is not much personality to Susie.

Regardless, Tan deserves credit for scoring some laughs while simultaneously taking care of the zombie business. The ratio of characters killed or turned to zombies versus healthy survivors must be comparable to that of The Walking Dead or the original Night of the Living Dead. Despite Tan Kayu’s jerkweediness, we would re-enlist for a sequel. Recommended for zombie fans, Zombiepura screens this Saturday (7/13) as part of NYAFF ’19.

Eric Khoo’s Ramen Shop

Japan was one of Singapore’s most important trading partners during the city-state republic’s early years of independence and it is still true today. The two nations enjoy strong economic and political ties, yet many older Singaporeans still bitterly remember the pain of the Japanese occupation. These long harbored resentments led to a schism within a Japanese ramen chef’s family. However, he will find cathartic healing through food in Eric Khoo’s Ramen Shop, which opens today in New York.

If you want to get technical about it, Masato will leave the film’s proper ramen shop after about fifteen minutes, following the death of its master chef, his emotionally detached father Kazuo. While going through his father’s effects, he found letters and his Singaporean mother’s Mandarin journal. Although he cannot read them, they fire his curiosity regarding the family she was estranged from. Hoping to find answers, as well as recipes for the local-style comfort food she used to cook for him, Masato impulsively returns to the Singapore he only knew as a small boy.

With the help of Miki, a food blogger he met online, Masato tracks down his Uncle Wee, who is delighted to welcome him into the family and teach him the recipe for Bak Kut Teh, or pork ribs soup. Unfortunately, the grandmother Masato never met will be pricklier to approach.

In many ways, Ramen Shop is a text book example of weepy culinary cinema. Many a sentimental tear will be shed over warm bowls of soup. However, Masato’s smart and sensitively drawn relationships with Uncle Wee and Miki elevate the film to a higher level. Khoo and screenwriters Tan Fong Cheng & Wong Kim Hoh deliver plenty of the expected big hanky moments, but the real pay-off is surprisingly subtle. It also should be stipulated pork ribs soup looks delish, even if it isn’t as photogenic as other movie-memory-stirring foods.

Takumi Saito is achingly earnest as Masako. He also develops some warm and deeply compelling chemistry with Mark Lee and Seiko Matsuda, who both ironically overshadow him as Uncle Wee and Miki respectively. Lee provides the film some comic nervous energy, but never gets remotely shticky, whereas the luminously charismatic Matsuda truly lights up the screen. The same can be said of Jeanette Aw. She and Tsuyoshi Ihara generate more tragically romantic wistfulness as Masato’s parents seen in flashbacks than entire marathon of Nicholas Sparks movies.

It might be tempting to call Ramen Shop something like Departures with better food, but it happens to be more upbeat than the Oscar-winning gold standard of Japanese tear-jerkers. Plus, the film’s consultant chef, Keisuke Takeda really put the resulting Ramen-Bak Kut Teh hybrid dish on his restaurant’s menu, so you know the food is legit. Sometimes, it is just nice to see a quiet film that is completely free of cynicism—exactly like this one. Recommended for audiences of foodie movies and ultra-accessible foreign films, Ramen Shop opens today (3/22) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Shirkers: The Iconic Indie That Never Was

This is probably the most celebrated “lost” film after Jodorowsky’s Dune, at least if you live in Singapore. Many local cineastes were expecting Shirkers to jump-start the nation’s indie film scene, even though it was produced by a small group of teenagers and their 30-something film-making teacher, Georges Cardona. Things did not pan out as they hoped when Cardona disappeared with all their footage. Twenty-five years later, Sandi Tan was reunited with the original 16mm footage, sans audio. We will probably never be able to see the film as Tan and her friends intended, but she subsequently repurposed the once missing video into Shirkers (trailer here), one of the most poignant documentaries of the year, which premieres this Friday on Netflix and also opens theatrically in New York.

The earnest nineteen-year-old Tan wore her early 1990s indie influences on her sleeve: Jarmusch, Tarantino, etc. She would be the first to admit her quirky and increasingly surreal serial killer road-trip movie was highly derivative of her heroes’ work. However, it was undeniably a Singaporean production. That alone made it special at the time. Looking back on the 1992 footage, it also would have been and sort of still is a time capsule document of a more traditional Singapore that no longer exists.

Somehow, Tan’s friends Jasmine Ng and Sophia Siddique allowed themselves to get caught up in her enthusiasm. Cardona served as director, while they filled just about every other role, including Tan playing the evil Amelie-like protagonist, “S,” which Ng and Siddique concede was probably a mistake in retrospect. Nevertheless, Tan and Ng willing sunk their personal savings into the production to cover a sudden financing gap. Naturally, they were all devastated when Cardona disappeared with their film, but it also forged an unusual bond between them.

Alas, Cardona is no longer with us (in the land of the living). In fact, his death was the catalyst for the partial rediscovery of Shirkers. Nevertheless, the film manages to partly explain what the heck was the deal with Cardona (but not entirely). Yet, despite the significant role he plays, the film is not about him. It is about Tan and Siddique and Ng. It is about Singapore at a time when you could still find old school colonial-era buildings and mom-and-pop establishments. It is about youthful idealism and an enduring love of cinema. Most of all it is about the special relationship shared by three friends who can truly drive each other to distraction.

As a documentary, Shirkers has mystery and cultural history elements, but it is also a long-deferred coming of age story. Tan digs pretty deeply into Cardona’s murky past, but she is even less sparing when examining her own life. She keeps peeling back the onion, producing a third act chocked full of epiphanies. Ultimately, it is shockingly poignant to fully understand how much the unfinished has meant to her, Ng and Siddique—and maybe even Cardona.

Tan and her co-editors, Lucas Celler and Kimberley Hassett also deserve credit for the terrific way the shaped the film’s narrative and incorporated eerily tantalizingly silent clips from the 1992 Shirkers. This is a deeply moving film that somehow also manages to be rejuvenating and restorative. Watching it will make you believe in redemptive third acts. Very highly recommended, Shirkers opens this Friday (10/26) in New York, at the Metrograph, simultaneous with its release on Netflix.

The Offering: Biblical Horror in Singapore

If you know your google doodles, you know this Saturday was Claude Shannon’s birthday. Little did he know, his work on binary value systems could raise the Tower of Babel and unleash the demon Leviathan. Elements of Biblical evil and the digital age, as well as some of our favorite Singaporean stars elevate Kelvin Tong’s American-funded Singaporean-produced horror film, The Offering (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Chicago muckraker Jamie Waters has come to Singapore to tend to her sister’s affairs after she committed suicide. Waters is naturally suspicious, questioning why Anna would end things now after dealing with her Huntington’s Disease for some many years, but it is hard to argue with the video recorded on her laptop. However, Waters soon discovers her sister’s death fits a pattern of suicides committed by high-functioning terminal cases, all of whom seemed to expect to be reincarnated.

Anna Waters’ environment clearly did not help either. She had been staying with her similarly afflicted young daughter in her estranged husband’s formerly mothballed family home. It is safe to say this waterfront property has some history behind it. Somehow, the old cultist who performed his rituals there might be connected to the binary-based internet virus apparently triggering the suicides. When the local Catholic church’s webmaster starts investigating with Father De Silva, a guilt-ridden exorcist from Bali, they uncover strange references to the Tower of Babel and Leviathan.

For a horror movie to really get under our skin, it has to entail, serious, metaphysical evil. To fight that kind of darkness, you need a priest pouring over ancient demonology tomes late at night. Happily, we have that here. In fact, Adrian Pang and Colin Borgonon inspire a good deal of confidence as Father Tan and Father De Silva. You can see the film noticeably perk up when Tong cuts to them.

Elizabeth Rice also makes a reasonably forceful genre protagonist when she is pursuing her own investigations. However, her family drama with niece Katie and bro-in-law Sam gets predictably tiresome. The latter is the worst kind of horror movie kid. Bizarrely, Tong also largely wastes Jaymee Ong in the pedestrian role of family friend Marjorie Tan, who is mostly called upon to babysit Katie. At least Pamelyn Chee (from Serangoon Road) gets a bit more to do as May Wong, the possible “Patient Zero” of the suicide epidemic.

Regardless, Tong understands how to creep out the inner Catholic in us all. The connections he draws between the Tower of Babel and binary (the new “One Language”) feel unsettlingly convincing in the moment and he exploits the old dark house setting quite efficiently. The execution is a little messy at times, but he deserves credit for originality. Recommended for old school demonic horror fans, The Offering opens tomorrow (5/6) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Art of the Real ’15: Snakeskin

The recent death of Lee Kuan Yew is certainly a logical moment to reflect on Singapore’s past and speculate about its future. However, this film is probably not the right vehicle to do either. It is something of a city symphony and an exploration of the national character, but it views both past and present through a deliberately distorted dystopian futuristic lens, circa 2066. Stylistically, Daniel Hui’s Snakeskin (trailer here) is a wholly fitting selection for the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Art of the Real series of aesthetically challenging docs.

Apparently, the narrator is the sole survivor of a doomsday cult led by a messianic prophet, who claimed to be the descendent and spiritual heir of Stamford Raffles, Singapore’s British Imperialist founder. This seems like a strange recruitment strategy, but it offers an opportunity to explore Singapore’s ambiguous and contradictory collective feelings towards its colonial past.

Our narrator’s ruminations are heard over and between surviving film footage his father ostensibly shot of contemporary Singapore, often featuring minority (but not especially marginalized) voices. It is certainly a timely reminder Singapore is not and never has been an ethnically homogeneous population.

Regardless of its intentions, Snakeskin prompts us to consider just how remarkable Singapore’s economic growth has been. This is a small archipelago-state, with little natural resources to speak of, and a historically fractured and factionalized populace. Race riots were relatively common place there in the immediate post-colonial years. Yet, it has become one of Asia’s celebrated “Tigers” solely due to its economic policies.

Be that as it is, a little of Snakeskin’s impressionistic reflection goes a long ways. The framing device is always conspicuously artificial and the images are often rather workaday. It is still a striking city and Hui gives us a sense there is both celebrated and secret history associated with nearly every street corner, but his approach is more conceptual than cinematic (or even installation-ish).

For those who appreciate the self-conscious aloofness of typical Cinema Guild releases, Snakeskin should scratch your itch when it screens Saturday (4/18) at the Francesca Beale, as part this year’s Art of the Real. You should now consider yourself duly warned or reasonably informed. The less adventurous who are still intrigued by Singapore’s history might find the HBO Asia miniseries Serangoon Road considerably more rewarding.

Canopy: War is a Personal Business

Australia and Singapore enjoy close diplomatic and economic ties. There is a free trade agreement between the two countries and Singapore provided assistance to Australia’s Afghanistan deployment. It is a special relationship forged in WWII by soldiers like the two protagonists of Aaron Wilson’s intimately experiential Canopy (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

For a pilot like “Jim,” being shot down over the dense jungles of Singapore is a double-edged sword. The thick vegetation provides natural cover, but it is an unforgiving and disorienting environment. It makes it difficult to distinguish friend from foe, which becomes an issue when he encounters “Seng.” Somehow, he conveys to Jim he is a Singaporean-Chinese soldier trapped behind enemy lines. An alliance is quickly forged, but few words are exchanged. Even if they were not stealthily evading the Japanese patrols, they could not understand each other anyway.

With its near complete lack of dialogue, Nic Buchanan & Rodney Lowe’s stunning sound design, and Stefan Duscio’s ominously beautiful cinematography, Canopy is likely to generate comparisons to Terrence Malick. It is a richly crafted film, but it is also a taut viewing experience that packs a real emotional wallop. With incredible subtlety, Wilson implies whoever survives the long dark night will honor the memory of their fallen nocturnal comrade for the rest of his life. Clearly, the length of time is not important in Canopy. Rather it is the intensity that matters.

Frankly, it is quite a complement to contend Canopy’s eighty-four minute run time (including credits) actually feels short, given its quiet wordlessness and the measured deliberateness with which Wilson submerges viewers in the murky setting. Yet, just as it is for Jim and Seng, Canopy is over before you know it.

Given Wilson’s approach, Canopy necessarily entails a distinct acting challenge for his two co-leads, but they rise to the occasion quite impressively. For Khan Chittenden, looking like a younger Matt Damon is probably both a curse and a blessing, but such cosmetic matters quickly melt away in Wilson’s jungle. As Jim, he expresses the film’s spirit of solidarity in a way that is genuinely moving. Likewise, the Taiwanese Mo Tzu-yi is silently eloquent and utterly believable as the wounded but resourceful Seng.

Co-productions are all the rage right now, but unlike Hollywood courting China, audiences can feel good about what this Australia-Singapore joint venture represents. Canopy violates nearly every war movie convention, yet it better represents the realities of combat than most of its forerunners. Highly recommended (for disciplined audiences), Canopy opens this Friday (8/29) in New York at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

ContemporAsian: Tatsumi

Yoshihiro Tatsumi could be called the Japanese Will Eisner. Tatsumi was the leading exponent of Gekiga, or serious manga that tackled adult story lines. Americans that are very hip or awfully geeky will already know Tatsumi’s work, particularly his Eisner winning graphic novel-autobiography, A Drifting Life. For the rest of us, Singaporean Eric Khoo’s Tatsumi (trailer here) serves as a compelling introduction to his career and stories, when the starkly beautiful animated tribute-biography opens this Wednesday at MoMA as part of their ongoing ContemporAsian film series.

Tatsumi was ten when World War II ended. Logically, the American occupation and economic revival of Japan would factor prominently in his life and that of his characters. Khoo intersperses five notable Tatsumi stories, mostly in black-and-white, amid his vivid color adaption of the Gekiga pioneer’s memoir. Psychologically complex and deeply flawed, it is clear how Tatsumi’s characters were shaped by their creator’s experiences. In fact, it is easy to conflate them with Tatsumi, particularly the unfortunate artist in Occupied.

Each of the five constituent stories would stand alone as satisfying self-contained short films. However, the most powerful of the collected adaptations comes first, by virtue of chronology. Hell forthrightly addresses the horrors of Hiroshima and its aftermath, but it takes viewers to some unexpectedly dark places, undercutting simplistic moral judgments. Throughout all five stories, there is a profound sense of alienation, often prodding the protagonists to commit shockingly anti-social acts out of existential compulsion, but their actions are always understandable, in a sadly human way.

Though his life was never as lurid as that of his marginalized characters, Tatsumi’s early years were marked by considerable pain and want. Khoo structures the film in a way that really emphasizes how these struggles instilled a humanistic empathy in Tatsumi, embracing those who were downtrodden and even grotesque. Ultimately, it is rather inspiring to see the artist rise from such mean circumstances to become an acknowledged leader of his field.

Rendered by Singapore-based creative animation director Phil Mitchell in a style akin to Tatsumi’s, the film’s animation is deceptively simple, but eerily expressive. Tatsumi’s warm voice also narrates the biographical portions of the film bearing his name, forging a further connection between subject and viewers.

It really says something when Singapore’s film establishment selects a film about a Japanese artist to represent the country with Academy Award voters. Yet, the film’s undeniable artistry and Khoo’s international reputation had to be a compelling combination leading to its submission for best foreign language film consideration at this year’s Oscars. Indeed, this is a richly rewarding film that deserves considerable international attention. Not just for manga readers, Tatsumi is enthusiastically recommended for broad-based general audiences when it screens at MoMa starting this Wednesday (4/4), through the following Monday (4/9).

SF International Animation Fest ’11: Tatsumi

Yoshihiro Tatsumi could be called the Japanese Will Eisner. Tatsumi was the leading exponent of Gekiga, or serious manga that tackled adult story lines. Americans that are very hip or awfully geeky will already know Tatsumi’s work, particularly his Eisner winning graphic novel-autobiography, A Drifting Life. For the rest of us, Singaporean Eric Khoo’s Tatsumi (trailer here) serves as a compelling introduction to his career and stories. Singapore’s official submission for best foreign language Academy Award consideration, Khoo’s animated tribute-biography screens at the San Francisco Film Society’s upcoming 2011 San Francisco International Animation Festival.

Tatsumi was ten when World War II ended. Somewhat logically, the American occupation and economic revival of Japan would factor prominently in his life and that of his characters. Khoo intersperses five notable Tatsumi stories, mostly in black-and-white, amid his vivid color adaption of the Gekiga pioneer’s memoir. Psychologically complex and deeply flawed, it is clear how Tatsumi’s characters were shaped by their creator’s experiences. In fact, it is easy to conflate them with Tatsumi, particularly the unfortunate artist in Occupied.

Each of the five would stand alone as satisfying self-contained short films. However, the most powerful of the collected stories comes first, by virtue of chronology. Hell forthrightly addresses the horrors of Hiroshima and its aftermath, but it takes viewers to some unexpectedly dark places, undercutting simplistic moral judgments. Throughout all five stories, there is a profound sense of alienation, often prodding the protagonists to commit shockingly anti-social acts out of existential compulsion, but their actions are always understandable, in a sadly human way.

Though his life was never as lurid as that of his marginalized characters, Tatsumi’s early years were marked by considerable pain and want. Khoo structures the film in a way that really emphasizes how these struggles instilled a humanistic empathy in Tatsumi, embracing those who were downtrodden and even grotesque. Ultimately, it is rather inspiring to see the artist rise from such mean circumstances to become an acknowledged leader of his field.

Rendered by Singapore-based creative animation director Phil Mitchell in a style akin to Tatsumi’s, the film’s animation is deceptively simple, but eerily expressive. Tatsumi’s warm voice also narrates the biographical portions of the film bearing his name, forging a further connection with viewers.

It really says something when Singapore’s film establishment selects a film about a Japanese artist to represent the country with Academy Award voters. Yet, the film’s undeniable artistry and Khoo’s international reputation had to be a compelling combination leading to its submission. Indeed, this is a richly rewarding film that deserves serious consideration. Not just for manga readers, Tatsumi is enthusiastically recommended for broad-based general audiences when it screens this Friday (11/11) and Sunday (11/13) as part of the SFFS’s International Animation Festival at the New People Cinema.