After the excitement brought about by the international triumph of Anthony Chen’s Ilo Ilo and the unprecedented local box-office success of Jack Neo’s Ah Boys to Men army recruit comedies, 2014 initially felt somewhat tepid in terms of production quality and quantity. In fact, the total number of features was surprisingly high, at around 25, although not so surprisingly, the films were of wildly varying quality. What is interesting is the emergence of more films that straddle the points between being overtly commercial like Jack Neo’s work, and the self-consciously art house in spirit.
Jack Neo the country’s most successful commercial filmmaker. Neo released the comedy The Lion Men on 30 January 2014, about two performing troupes competing in the traditional Chinese Lion dance. This movie did not do as well at the box office as some of his other movies. Its sequel, The Lion Men: Ultimate Showdown, which followed on 12 May 2014, is a continuation of the original story. The former Tiger Crane top performer Supreme (Tosh Zhang) and his new hip hop-inspired troupe Storm Riders fiercely compete with the traditional Tiger Crane troupe, now led by Mikey (Wang Wei Liang). The competition is complicated by a love triangle.
Ultimate Showdown fared even worse at the box-office than the original. The two films took only S$2.27 million and S$1.17 million respectively, a considerable setback when compared with the S$7.9 million for the Ah Boys to Men 2. The local film critics panned both Lion Men movies, especially the sequel, noting a poorly written script, some corny jokes and the too obvious product placements that disrupt the plot.
Falling back on the success of Ah Boys to Men, Neo presented yet another rendition of the military comedy with Ah Boys to Men 3: Frogmen, released for the Lunar New Year in February 2015. Though not actually a sequel, the film features many of the same characters as the first two Ah Boys to Men, although the setting is now the Naval Diving Unit’s gruelling combat diver course, which only a small number ever manage to complete. Unfortunately, Neo continues to let his penchant for melodrama and excessive product placement get in the way of the film’s intriguing portrayal of what it takes to be a frogman. The Frogmen’s opening weekend box-office set a new record at S$2.83 million, beating Jackie Chan’s adventure Dragon Blade (S$1.48 million) as well as his 2013 Ah Boys to Men 2 record of S$1.5 million.
Another mainstream production, A Fantastic Ghost Wedding (2014, formerly known as Little Medium Boy), directed by Meng Ong (Miss Wonton, 2001) combines the supernatural and the humorous and also the acting talents of Singapore’s popular comedian Mark Lee as a medium, and Sandra Ng, Hong Kong’s well-known star and producer as a grieving mother. The story, often described as a “horror comedy,” is about a former singer (Ng) who hires a famous boy medium (Keane Chan) and his father to find a bride for her late son. It is in fact more family drama than either horror or comedy, exploring family relationships and the themes of love, loss and letting go with a degree of tenderness and poignancy that makes this flawed film watchable.
Singapore has not produced many Malay-language films since the golden age of Malay cinema in the 1950s and 60s, so it is interesting that 2014 brought two noteworthy Malay features, both by first-time feature filmmakers. Banting (Malay for slam), written and directed by M. Raihan Halim, is Singapore’s first commercially produced Malay film since the 1970s. The story revolves around an adolescent tudung-wearing Malay-Muslim Singaporean girl Yasmin (Izyan Mellyna) who wants to become a professional wrestler. Defying the expectations of family and friends, she joins wrestling classes without telling her conservative Muslim mother Halimah (Mastura Ahmad). The film is a comedy, but as with many comedies, under the cheery surface of the light genre lurk serious questions – in this case, about the choice between personal freedom and tradition.
The other Malay movie, Lover Is Loved (Sayang disayang) aka The Missing Ingredient (Ramuan Rahasia) directed by Sanif Olek (Lost Sole) was selected to represent Singapore at the 2015 Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category. The film examines the relationship between grouchy widower Pak Harun (Malaysian legendary actor Rahim Razali) and Murni (local stage actress Aidli Mosbit), his live-in nurse from Aceh, Indonesia, who tries to win the heart of her wheelchair-bound employer with her cooking. The director draws upon the influences of local and Southeast Asian Malay culture in the film’s loving depiction of the food, and the use of music and languages. It was made on a partly crowd-sourced budget of S$400,000 and premiered as the closing film of the Southeast Asian Film Festival in Singapore in May 2014.
Perhaps the most anticipated film event of the year was the return of the Singapore International Film Festival (featuring a new acronym SGIFF, formerly SIFF) after a hiatus of two years. The reorganised SGIFF, now in its 25th edition with a new board and Festival team, took place concurrently from 4 to 14 December with three other film and television events as part of the inaugural Singapore Media Festival, hosted by the Media Development Authority (MDA). Founded in 1987, the Singapore International Film Festival, guided by Philip Cheah, had in its early years decided on a philosophy of spotlighting Asian cinema which remains to this day. Cheah served as the SIFF director-programmer until his resignation in mid-2008. The SGIFF is now led by executive director Wahyuni (Yuni) Hadi, while Zhang Wenjie is the new Festival programmer. Both had formerly served together as co-directors of the 22nd SIFF (2009) to great success and it is to their credit that the Festival made a sterling comeback in 2014.
Of special interest to local film enthusiasts was the Singapore Panorama section, which saw the presentation of 10 local features at the 2014 SGIFF, many of which were sold out. Besides these, Unlucky Plaza, written and directed by Ken Kwek, had the honour of being the first Singapore feature ever to grace the opening of the Singapore International Film Festival. The film enjoyed two sold-out screenings. There were also two Singapore short film programmes which were well-received and which were in fact sold out.
Unlucky Plaza is undoubtedly one of the year’s noteworthy productions. An action-crime-drama, its story was apparently inspired by real events, involving some rental scams reported in the Singapore press around 2009. The suspenseful plot revolves around several characters brought together by passion, greed and chance.
In the film’s epicentre is Filipino immigrant Onassis (Epy Quizon), a single father whose restaurant in Lucky Plaza, a shopping centre frequented by the Filipino community, has fallen victim to a food poisoning scandal caused by a disgruntled employee. Onassis needs cash as much as the high-flying Terence “Sky” (Adrian Pang), a well-off actor-turned-motivational speaker, who, despite having a large house, an art collection and a Porsche sports car, owes a large sum to a loan shark tied to the Chinese mafia.
The gangster Baby Bear (Guo Liang) and his bosses are in no mood to wait for the money. Sky wants to pay off his debt from the sale proceeds of a family flat. His wife, Michelle (Judee Tan) however, who has an intimate relationship with the weak and indecisive Pastor Tong Wen (Shane Mardjuki), has different designs for the flat and she carries them out with unexpectedly uncontrollable results.
The chain of events climaxes in a suspenseful hostage situation in Sky’s luxury villa, during which all the key characters meet. This extensive sequence (about 60 minutes out of the film’s two hours) is the actual core of the plot. Persisting suspense is punctuated by moments of violence, emotional melodrama and occasional flashes of dark humour until the denouement, the result of which in rough outline is known to the viewers from the beginning. The plot is in effect a series of flashbacks framed by the confrontation of the central characters in front of a TV camera, recollecting their harrowing experiences and discuss the lesson received from the painful event in the past.
Like in his 2013 omnibus Sex.Violence.FamilyValues (SVFV) the director makes observations on tangential problems that find resonance in Singapore, such as the immigrant issue. The film was given an M18 rating for coarse language, restricting admission to viewers over 18 years of age. Despite its shortcomings, Unlucky Plaza is an example of decent moviemaking and intelligent entertainment.
Another film at the SGIFF with a dark subject is Ms J Contemplates Her Choice, a debut feature by Jason Lai. Singer-songwriter Kit Chan stars in the title role as Jo Yang, a hip radio personality who dispenses tongue-in-cheek advice together with her on-air partner Ken, played by real-life DJ Bobby Tonelli. Veteran actress Xiang Yun plays her more conservative elder sister, Stacey.
The suspense begins when a mysterious male caller asks Jo on air to choose between two people to kill. When Jo playfully makes her choice, someone actually dies as a result. Thus begins a series of chilling calls in which Jo is forced to decide the fate of strangers. Strikingly photographed with glossy production values, the film portrays a bleak universe where morality seems to count for very little in the face of self-interest. Though flawed – the film’s subplots could have been tightened – on the whole, this psychological thriller has an air of soul-searching and reflection that sets it apart from most homegrown crime dramas.
On a different note, Han Yew Kwang undertook a pioneering effort in making Singapore’s first sex comedy, the three-episode feature Rubbers revolving around condoms. In a sense, this is not an enviable task, given that Singaporean society is quite puritanical about public discussions of sex, a fact which severely restricts the filmmakers’ scope for treating sex matters in an uninhibited, adult way. At the same time, the experience of producing a sophisticated, erotic comedy barely exists in the city-state. As a result, some scenes were more awkward than funny. Considering the subject matter and Han’s reputation for making off-beat comedies, it was no surprise that the film sold out at the SGIFF.
Singapore Girl (2014), the new feature by director Kan Lume, premiered at the SGIFF Singapore Panorama. With obvious reference to the moniker of the glamorous air hostesses of Singapore Airlines, Kan Lume’s Singapore Girl tries to discover the real person under the surface of this popular image. Holidaying on Ko Samui, Thailand, a “Singapore Girl” Chloe (Maria Alexandra), and Leon (Leon Yong), explore their new relationship and emotions despite the bitter experience of their own past and the absence of a common language (their communication alternates between English, Putonghua and Cantonese).
Tan Pin Pin’s documentary To Singapore, with Love (2013) is no different to her previous documentaries such as Singapore GaGa and Invisible City. They all bring to the surface forgotten or ignored parts of Singapore’s history. To Singapore, with Love breaches a hitherto taboo political subject about the country’s past history as it focuses on political exiles. The film was not permitted to be publicly shown (it was not banned outright), although private screenings could take place. A well-known paradox is that such restrictions present a film with generous free publicity that increases interest in the film. More important however were the broad discussions in the Singapore media and online, following the government’s decision. The filmmaker has expressed her hope that the film will be shown in Singapore in the future.
Note: 1 SGD = USD 0.735
Yvonne Ng Uhde and Jan Uhde