Four gangsta-wannabe schoolgirls navigate friendship, school rules and academic expectations in Tan Siyou’s fantastic debut feature, an emotionally resonating work about the codification of teenage identity and destiny in conformist Singapore.
An interrogator and his subject are under the scrutiny of Hui’s camera as he dives into a murky part of Singapore’s legal history through a highly psychological mode that will interest adventurous cinephiles with a discerning taste for the avant-garde.
A work fundamentally rooted in voyeurism and the invasion of personal space in private and in public, Yeo’s part-mystery, part anti-thriller teases us with its form and structure as a young couple tries to find their missing child who has disappeared in mysterious circumstances.
Although its overlong slow-cinema style may alienate some audiences, the filmmakers’ control of mise-en-scene feels assured and reassuring as undocumented migrants face moral questions and exploitation eking out a painful existence in the mountains of Taiwan.
Bursts of warped creativity punctuate this rather inscrutable Singaporean experimental drama about the discomfiting nature of personal fantasies and quiet acceptance in matters of life and death.
Tong’s long-gestating new film is a work of poise, as much a lament for the ‘lost’ Chinese-educated generation who found difficulty existing in English-prioritised Singapore in the late ‘70s, as it is a pining for simpler times and simpler truths.
The hopes of transcending their abject youth emanate from the trio of well-realised characters in Chen’s assured fourth feature, set and shot in far-flung Northeast China.
Even when it falls back into a kind of televisual style, Kwek’s work is always engaging as it tackles the thorny local LGBT issue with a kind of reactionary bite that is rare in Singapore cinema.
Meditative yet at times tonally dissonant, Liao’s work about the shifting temporalities of identity and memory is ultimately elusive.
A promising and polished debut feature, this Singapore-Korean co-production has earnestness in abundance even if the storytelling doesn’t quite offer anything markedly revelatory.
Eternality Tan 