Talking Cock The Movie

In 2002, Singaporeans were treated to a good laugh by the satirical comedy TalkingCock The Movie written, produced and directed by husband-and-wife team Colin Goh and Joyceln Woo. Their debut feature is inspired by their popular satirical website www.talkingcock.com. Though it has the raw feel of an amateur production, the film sparkles with confidence, originality and irreverent wit, poking good-natured fun at Singaporeans, their obsessions, history and government, an approach rarely seen on the island. Talking cock is a colloquial term for speaking nonsense, which the filmmakers proceed to achieve through four comically surreal stories interspersed with farcical sketches. The main episodes feature a young man’s attempt to “dot.com” his father’s loansharking business; a banker who goes crazy after losing his mobile phone; a love-lorn Chinese vendor who uses an unconventional method to convey her feelings; and a teenage heavy metal band forced to transform into a boy band. Most interesting is the loanshark episode which is in fact an elaboration of the directors’ award-winning digital short eAhLong.com while the last story would have benefited from tighter editing. The 110-member cast of mostly amateurs deliver adequate tongue-in-cheek performances. A significant detail is the movie’s multi-ethnic character which, for the first time, features Indians, Chinese and Malays in lead roles. Moreover, the multi-lingual dialogue including the use of Singlish is probably the closest screen reflection so far of how Singaporeans really speak. The Hokkien expletives, however, though playfully bleeped over by the directors, were considered “excessively vulgar”, thus earning the film an NC 16 rating (No Children Under 16). The censors had wanted to cut a scene as well and passed the film only after the director’s personal appeal. The movie’s DVD version cut by the censors to comply with a PG (Parental Guidance) rating, had its release embargoed for six months with no explanation. Shot on mini DV, the US$ 91,000 film was produced by the filmmakers’ Wu Liao Media.