“Singapore is a serious city. Levels of stress are so high that it makes women frigid and men impotent,” says the director Han Yew Kwang in his comments on Rubbers. “We need a sexy comedy. While they are watching the film, the spectators can laugh to alleviate their stress, get turned on after seeing it and, once they are at home, they can make love… wearing a rubber.”
Rubbers is rather an unusual film, a somewhat bold one in comparison to the usual fare produced in the city state. Usually excluded in local films, or at most alluded to in a demure if not self-conscious way, sex is the chain that links the three stories that Han has woven together in his third feature film. Surprisingly, there are no hesitations or brakes applied in these wild Singapore slings, and the challenge of this film is to push the limits as far as possible, without incurring the draconian wrath of the local censors. So it’s all about visual allusion, explicit at times, when the time comes to portray ‘toys for adults’; the dialogues are not bowdlerized, it is peppered with racy language and dirty talk.
The three tales hold up to ridicule the frustrations and contradictions of the people of Singapore. In the first episode, Adam, a third-rate playboy, is punished for his persistent refusal to wear condoms during sex. He ends up wearing a rubber that he cannot remove from his penis. In the face of this crisis, he even ends up calling the emergency services, in a comic spiral with a very local tone, which will certainly ring truer for the local audiences. The struggle with the condom that won’t come off culminates in the coming to life, from out of the television set, of the Japanese porn star Momoko, who tries to remove the stuck on rubber with her world-renowned oral techniques. It’s just a shame she too gets stuck to the diabolical contraption.
In the second segment, the relationship travails of a sixty-something couple is portrayed: the man, Ah Niu, goes with prostitutes who are the same age as his daughter; the woman, Ah Hua, wants a divorce, after an encounter with a sales rep who has convinced her of the beneficial properties of his wares, waving an enormous vibrator in her husband’s face. The current day arguments blend with memories of Ah Niu’s first ever declaration of love, which followed a practical joke that revolved around condoms.
The third opens with a scene that seems to have been pillaged straight from a theatre of the absurd play: a journalist who reviews condoms comes home to find an enormous rubber getting ready to hang itself using her socks and a bra. It is a durian-flavoured condom, which the woman had given a bad review to. But the reason behind the announced suicide is not the criticism it received; the condom is about to pass its sell-by date and doesn’t want to die pointlessly. The woman confesses her long-term celibacy and, encouraged by the animated condom, tries to seduce a sexy plumber.
These are the pieces that Han moves around his chess board in this fast-paced film. The transition between flashbacks and more surreal moments is effortlessly smooth, creating a fluid amalgamation that keeps the spectator glued to the screen. The ironic tone of Rubbers and its outlandish characters offers a surprising and curious peek into an unexplored side of polite but stressful society in Singapore. As the film is due for release in its homeland in April, it will be interesting to see if the locals manage to recognize and appreciate themselves in this irreverent portrayal.