You might have missed it, but one notable entry from Singapore made it into the 66th Venice Film Festival earlier this month: the medium length film Earth by visual artist/director Ho Tzu Nyen, which premiered on September 5th as part of the Corto Cortissimo section.

Here is a filmmaker who is taking some remarkable flight these past months, having been invited to such prestigious events like Cannes, Pusan this coming October, and Venice as mentioned, one after the other and each time with something different to show. So it should be well worth taking a closer look at the work of one director who with versatility, patience and maturity has not only made his initial mark on the film festival circuit but appears poised to become one more voice from Singapore to be reckoned with.

I have to add, though, that what I am referring to in this review is a near-finished, picture locked version of the film. Since music is a key element in it, a protagonist even, the reviewer as much as anyone who wasn’t there for the occasion must have missed out on an integral part of the work proper, when Earth was in fact screened to a live soundtrack accompaniment by Yasuhiro Morinaga and Stefano Pilia.

Even so, owing to its specific nature, which I shall come back to shortly, this need not be too much of a hindrance. Moreover, I would argue that none of the following contains any spoilers because Earth is possibly best described as the performance of a film rather than, say, some ready-made mainstream thriller flick. If you are game for a little cinema adventure (and trust this reviewer enough to just tag along), then maybe here is something for you:

“Earth”, the latest short or rather medium length film by Singaporean filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen (HERE), is a staged canvas put into motion pictures; which is not entirely surprising, given the director’s background in art history and theatre. As a whole, “Earth” is almost too accomplished to call it experimental, though technically that would be the category to fit a piece which is convincingly unwieldy in terms of reviewing – but not watching.

In the beginning, one is tempted to say, there is a black screen: “Earth” opens as a sort of genesis on starry lights and curly, indistinct shapes and forms as we witness a formation underway, something fluid that is happening we know not to what end. But as soon as we get to see the first shots of something recognizable, fragments and scraps of wreckage and human body parts, one might assume to be watching a post-apocalyptical allegory, perhaps. Electronic music and an industrial soundtrack add further to these first suggestive moments.

As a whole, “Earth” is almost too accomplished to call it experimental

The camera scans a carefully arranged waste ground in a single long take. We are being guided to survey a scenario of eclectic chaos, taking it in by way of a single fluid motion of lateral and diagonal pans. The image is near still. There is almost no movement, other than the camera’s gaze. Flickering neon lights impart their eerie sense of doom and otherworldliness onto the scene.

Human shapes begin to dominate the laid out view. There are tangled bodies lying around; are they dead? They are men and women, Asian, Caucasian, all strewn about amidst the remains of discarded goods and cables, a web of consumer waste. Eventually, it comes to focus on a trickle of something, presumably blood, flowing from behind the ear of an unmoving man’s face. This could be the search for something, and as it plays out we have a latent feeling, perhaps uneasiness, that someone wants us to see. All of this lasts for about 11 minutes, and then the title appears, EARTH, white on black.

The film continues with sparse movements, some glimpses of carefully measured temporary awakening, and all of it theatrically choreographed. We realize this is a study in gestures. We are reminded of a scene from a painting by Caravaggio. By now the score has morphed into an instrumental and spheric sound, enhancing our sense of this being not quite real. A petroleum lamp is switched on, and off again after a while, to perplexing effect. The ensuing change in lighting makes for an astonishing degree of drama in an unfolding which is otherwise poor in visual minerals, so to speak, anything narrative that would make it legible to the mind in a straightforward manner.

Again, a shift in focus of illumination and slight camera movement brings a character into centre frame, who wakes up and slowly, as if in a daze he cannot fully overcome, calls those around to life. Their indicatory gestures and finger pointing lead us upwards and out of the industrial quagmire towards nature and sunlight, the near equivalent of a paradise, or just a hint. Touched by a sunbeam, a young man cannot open his eyes. Not for being blinded by it, but we take his calm facial expression to mean that he is simply genuinely unable to open them. At which point, 22 minutes into the film, the title reappears: EARTH, this time black on white, a counterpoint.

And then back to the pit again. A downward movement takes us along to continue our stock taking journey and eventually it comes to rest on another young man. We only see his upper torso centre right, as he lifts his head to show his face and reveal closed eyes to the camera, while the back of his head is being capped (or gripped?) by another one’s hand from out of the depth of the frame. A light bulb switches on. The young man’s head is suspended in a rocking movement which seems passive, if not suffered, for shifting facial expressions alternately indicate feelings of confusion, anxiety or some kind of pain, as in troubled sleep. Scraps of sound and music complete the prevailing sense of irritation. Presently, his face is clouded over by these shadows of the subconscious or a dream, which lasts for nearly four minutes. Oddly – and deliberately inconclusively – the gesture and poise of this arrangement lends itself to sexual readings as well; the connotations are clearly there.

As the film progresses, the camera intake becomes gradually more summary. All the people we see here are loosely dressed and draped on crates and among garbage and the aforementioned wreckage of civilization and its markers. Physical movements are catatonic while accompanied by an ambient sound and white noise. An occasional human voice in interspersed musical intonations gives something like emotional highpoints to the visual composition before yielding to sympathetic, synthetic music again. Is what we see the world after Pandora’s Box has been opened?

In a climactic wide shot the full canvas is finally being revealed as the camera pulls back. Bathed in changing temperatures of light, the complete arrangement is given spatiality and a sense of overall plasticity. As is the case throughout this moving image, chiaroscuro techniques are used to astounding effect and bring about an influx of profound implications. The shapes temporarily appear to be lifted from their previous artificiality to attain something resembling communal life. Motion connects the isolated figures. This segment of the one encompassing scene that the film consists of means a consummate integration of arrangement and still life posture, dramatized (if not redeemed) by the play of light over surface. Here, the formerly surreal picture becomes sublime.

The final sequence has the opening water motif return to enriched meaning. The blindfolded man from before is singled out again, as the light drains from the picture. His aspect, which the camera passes over as a sort of clue, leads to another male figure that “awakens” to his own reflection – a dream? Has this even been a nightmare to begin with? We cannot be too sure, but we will be left to ponder and reflect on these images for some time as “Earth”, a little sphinx of a film, comes to a close.

As I’ve said at the beginning, this picture must be sat through and experienced for anyone to come to some kind of conclusion about. And what discovery this can mean I would dearly recommend to the sophisticated cineaste with a taste for a visual meal besides the fast and the obvious. I do hope that a film as peculiar as Earth will find its screen (and proper presentation) in Singapore to get shown to its home audience. Because this one – whichever way you look at it – is more than a trifle, enough to prove once more that “medium” and “mediocre” really are two different things.

In 2008, SIFF successfully introduced a new section to its programming, called Singapore Panorama. That year, local film production was at a peak and there really was a lot to show. Going into its second year, the test was now whether there is enough substance to justify such special selection, or whether it amounts to little more than filling. Since numbers aren’t too important and short film making is well alive in Singapore by good tradition, to throw in more shorts in two out-of-competition packages seemed an obvious enough choice. Here is an evaluation of the second bonus programme: Panorama Shorts 2.

Sun Koh is no doubt a seasoned director in her own right and has gradually built a reputation for the seminally remote, the experimental fun side of filmmaking in some of her work, including the Lucky 7 project which she helmed last year. With her latest short film, titled Dirty Bitch, she presents a wilfully jagged, spicy and in-your-

face quote on film quotation that results in a question mark: three acts on sanity – and what remains?

Dirty Bitch obviously falls into that fashionable column of short films that mostly exist for their spectacle. That is what they set out to present, and the message can be cathartic or rebellious, but it is always a reaction to something. So it is with Dirty Bitch. There are no characters in this one, nor does it bother to profess any psychological observation that would require serious analysis to probe beneath the surface – everything here is meant to be read at face level.

A pair of siblings is shown, brother and sister, in a violent pas de deux of hatred and self hatred through their apartment after she returns pregnant from studying abroad. The designated “slut” or “dirty bitch”, Jen, tries for an abortion, and that’s where the film mutates into a musical segment and sadistic fight with the gynaecologist over the morality of the whole issue. Lastly, Jen goes for her interview at a law school, only to make the discovery that it is a panel of petty debauchery that is going to pass their verdict and decide on her future.

All of this is one cut above your Jack Neo satire, playfully precise in its use of clichés, and there is some obvious production value in it as well; and yet, the exact montage and style has been encountered before and much to the same end – only a lot more powerful (and somebody please kill that bloody white rabbit; well, that has almost been achieved in this one, I admit). “Anything for perfection” is the film’s motto, and what follows can be read in full as a memento to own up to one’s imperfections.

Set against Singapore’s glossy postcard harbour front image, not even the Merlion is spared, and the general impetus becomes very clear. However, though the short lashes out against a narrow-minded bourgeois mind set, against censorship and hypocrisy, there is no freshness, no force in it that is youthful and credible. On the part of its message, Dirty Bitch feels like a hangover breakfast, no wake-up call. Even so, the film is worth multiple viewings, for it is not as randomly pieced together as one may first assume. Pacing and voice over are well trimmed, and together with a good choice of score and voluminous sound design they generate a sexually charged atmosphere right to the point of suspense and a well-calculated morbid appeal.

Maybe this is all that this short film aimed to achieve, or maybe some crucial linkages have been deleted (for appropriate reasons?). A feeling of severe puzzlement may leave some viewers indignant – and others wishing for something more risky, more profound and simply: more film – Cut! Dirty Bitch is an inconsequential short film that features more entertaining routine than thought provoking punch – unless, that is, this review should prove otherwise.

Infinity is the collaborative effort of a group of eight filmmakers who came up with six experimental videos under the trigger term of “infinity” to challenge and explore filmic perception. Since film by its very nature invariably deals with the passage of time, and since infinity is rather hard to condense into just 15 minutes, if not impossible, these filmlets would pinpoint the basic components of permutation, of changeability or duration, all pretty elemental and potentially enlightening aspects of the medium, for sure.

Let it Snow by Ming is a whimsical video that shows chewing gum marks on a pavement and thus snow as a horizontal occurrence. Here, cause and effect are all in the pace and the stride of the observing pedestrian; which is mildly funny but completely linear, as the camera eventually terminates in front of a glass door to acknowledge the authoritative reality of objects as things. Time Without End by Gözde + Russel Zehnder sees a newspaper selling auntie seated at her table in a time-lapse shot with the flux of ordinariness and city bustle rushing past like a veil of insignificance. Again, this piece comes to an end and will seem like a comment on newsworthiness that is really a tad too plain.

Next is Womb by Victric Thng, which isn’t as trivial but expands on the motif of illusion by not just adding a twist to standard viewing. Instead, a monochrome expanse of water with a small ship travelling left to right is doubled up against the horizon. The mirrored image now has the water-bound object flying through the sky as a plane in opposite direction – and sure enough, the resulting hourglass gets turned over and over again. In combination with a sustained underwater soundtrack this produces a controlled hypnotic effect that is almost mechanical, but could also serve as visual wellness.

Untitled by Lillian Wang offers a 360 degree pan and voices from the centre that solely for the gentleness of their conversation softly stroke over the subject of sickness, aging and death. And by the time the inventory has come full circle to rest on the slight ventilation that plays with a curtain and sunlight, you recall that it is the ingredients (and their balance) that make a film. This one can rightly be called elemental and stands out among the rest as convincingly filmic. By comparison, Still Life by co-directors GreenJune, offers a behind the scenes glimpse of a group of filmmakers recording the sound and stillness of their shoot, nothing more.

As the set empties out, so does the short video message – but without generating much silence, tension or impact, we’ve seen this before. Finally, with Nothing is Forever by Yeo Lee Nah, the series comes to a rather entertaining close. With this montage video we see the camera and editing equipment getting back into operational mode as a selection of most ordinary actions, like pouring water into a glass or cutting food on a plate, are tweaked against the logic of depletion and consumption, showing infinity at work.

To sum it up, Infinity is not another Lucky 7, shrunk to fit a short. It is the somewhat forced name for an experimental container, and maybe it fits in as much as infinity (literally speaking, not as a theme) is nothing but an aberration of the linear. But it has to be said that as a short film, these assembled videos just aren’t overly original and, with the sole exception of Untitled, not sufficiently immersed in the medium.

Not quite as much needs to be said about Garden Girls by Rick Aw, a narrative short film that, unfortunately, has little more to tell than the title. Two girls in their early twenties are lightly in love and spend their days at the family pool or in the Botanic Gardens, in front of a pond or beneath an artificial waterfall, until cruel fate or randomness separates them as one of the pair goes abroad to study. On their last day together they try to have a good time, frolicking like the kittens they apparently are, and don’t mind being observed and stalked by the rich girl’s neighbour, who is a photographer with marital problems, so we are told. Later, as the abandoned one (Magdalene Tan) in her love-sickness and dejection needs some consolation she conspires with her neighbour (Sunny Pang) in a tour of re-enactment to ease the pain; and from this lonely shore no wisdom reaches any further than floating apples…

This lesbian lost love episode is nowhere near convincing, has no psychological detail and, paradoxically enough, is mired in shallowness. It is terribly written, all dialogue stale and unimaginative, the emotional curvature stays flat throughout and what scenic unfolding there is gets used up by the most straightforward and superfluous repetition. On top of this, the cut and dried female typification prevalent in this short obliterates all need for analysis and is real painful to watch. It is astounding to see how capable actors like Sunny Pang and Magdalene Tan can be used to such disadvantage and give stale performances for lack of character substance. Even those supposedly intimate scenes between the two girls on the day that all was well do not add up, and their mutual affection, let alone erotic attraction, does not transpire in the least. If any further proof was needed that vacuity on a page can not be redeemed by pretty pictures, Garden Girls provides it.

The army themed short Blank Rounds by Green Zheng is certainly the most ambitious film of the programme in that it addresses the psychologically daring topic of insanity. A perfectly average-looking young soldier fresh after enlistment and undergoing the military routine of standardization, complete with hair clipping and uniform, somehow and inexplicably begins to show signs of deviation from the norm. He develops symptoms of stress and mental disorder, the ramifications of which in turn cause disciplinary measures and his comrades to ostracize him for his queer “selfish” behaviour. Is he a poser who claims to have headaches, then hallucinations and so forth, to not be up to the physical challenge and pressure he faces?

National Service as a disabling threat – if not in a Singaporean context, the theme is pretty familiar and has sad semblances in real life. The fictionalisation this subject matter is given in Blank Rounds is no less thought through and elevates the singular occurrence to drastic effect. Eventually, the young troubled soldier makes his way through the system’s provisions for dealing with the mentally unstable, until in the short’s final scene confronting him is a sterile, white containment cell with a helpless doctor to match.

As much as the film in a mere 12 minutes is visibly making an effort to frame and phrase the extreme situation to mold it into something archetypical, it doesn’t fully succeed. The onset of a young man losing it, is convincing and real. Increasingly, though, the action gets choreographed and stilted to finally culminate in a clean laboratory set up which undermines the entire build-up if it ever was meant to amount to a psychological case study. What individual contours and cinematic empathy had been generated before – ultimately, the effort seems lost on the picture.

In any staging of an event or accident, of a character or emotion, heightened aesthetic value alone can never be enough, but it has to come in the form of heightened expressivity. To transport an image into the three dimensional realm is to bring it onto the stage of our world, the world not of shapes but of volumes and spaces. Towards the end – not just on its final, deliberately inconclusive ending – Blank Rounds makes the wrong choices and flattens its own inner landscape. It’s a pity, really, that in this one the form should win out over the film’s content.

All things considered, Panorama 2 wasn’t a particularly enjoyable programme. The selection is neither distinguished nor significant enough to make an impact, and while you find yourself wishing for more audacity (or ambitiousness) in one, you see too much of the latter in the next. Clearly, more originality is needed.

Screening at SIFF under the Singapore Panorama section this year was another politically aware documentary feature called “Brother No.2” by Jason Lai. In well-established, almost plain, fashion, this 75 minutes long film tries to lessen the distance we feel when facing the unimaginable – in this case the abysmal horrors of the Khmer Rouge terror regime and its many unreconciled victims.

One of the victims and an eye-witness to his own father’s torturous interrogation, Soy Sen, functions as our guide through the hell of memory as we follow him on a journey to face the man in charge of the infamous torture prison S-21.

We understand by this linear set-up that he is out on a mission to confront this haunting past and lasting injustice – whether he undertakes it for the camera or just emboldened by it, is not entirely clear and an uneasy question. By the time the film ends some doubts remain. But this has nothing to do with the story’s development as such, the accounting that in the end there is no redemption: the two men, victim and alleged perpetrator, come face to face – and converse politely. There is a fatalistic honesty in this and the impression a saddening one; and very powerful indeed.

What is at fault here, however, is the technical and structural procedure, the film’s sense of direction, which is too simplistic and insufficiently executed. A large part of this is attributable to the handling of the footage. The voice-over which is supposed to do the talking in this picture is not engaging but instead sounds patronizing in an uninformed way. It feels like alien tissue where it is addressing scars and severe wounds, some of them festering; quite literally, it sounds cosmetic. The inroad for sympathy to find its way into the portrait of somebody else’s life should come through their voice and their own, personal images, whether it is in the setting or the story. If it is addressing a big theme like in this case, then the two will be so closely intertwined, the place and what happened with it, as to be virtually inseparable, close to identical; and therein we can find all the telling that’s needed. Not so in “Brother No.2”.

You can discard of this as a superficial comment in itself, as little more than a merely subjective response to a certain pitch of voice. Still, the textual information provided doesn’t do the theme justice. It doles out facts to provide a context that in the end is both bookish and rudimentary. The distribution and quality of supplementary information throughout any documentary is always crucial, especially so where it touches upon the political sphere; here it is simply not done appropriately. To fittingly provide a context – well, there are many ways for doing just that and I need not go into it at this point. But it should have been done in a markedly less foregrounded manner. There is nothing in the spoken words to penetrate the layer of immediate impression. The interviews are not illuminated from within and you are left with many a staple utterance throughout the film. The interviewees, well chosen as they may be, present their case, but they don’t open up.

For example, there is an interview with the notoriously incorrigible Nuon Chea, the homicidal regime’s chief ideologist, interspersed with the other accounts. It was him, who conceived the scheme to erase the educated part of Cambodia’s population. He inaugurated the execution policy for the realization of a Maoist Utopia; and he is the one known as “Brother No.2” who could laugh at the word “genocide” in the face of 1.7 million killed – almost a quarter of the nation’s entire population. The footage shows him in his rural home near the Thai border, living out a private citizen’s life together with his wife. Apparently, it was shot before his arrest in late 2007 to stand trial before the recently established international tribunal after the former deal by which he had been granted factual immunity in the late 90s had been terminated. Presently, justice can be done – as practiced by the law. But it is also noteworthy to state that he has admitted to feel remorse and wants to speak out in court. We don’t know everything yet and as this chapter is still awaiting closure, we have to await the outcome.

But coming back to the film at hand and to the issue of how it treats the subject matter, it needs to be acknowledged that there are limits to what ground speech can cover; or un-veil. There are limits to the effable. Is it psychologically possible to admit genocide? We have to question this all too plain approach on a principle level first, before handling something which is out of proportion with inadequate tools of cognition. What do we really know or understand about something or another one’s mind if we feel with them? Empathy, or the lack of it, is not the same as understanding. The one cannot replace the other.

And then, there are some very odd animation sequences in the film that don’t do the telling they are supposedly meant for, but are completely off the mark – least of all aesthetically. They are wholly insufficient in covering both the human tragedy or dimension of the Khmer Rouge, and the political background of Cold War geo politics of a very precise time and historical experience. I wouldn’t go so far as to assume any misguided exploitational interest here, but the sheer methodical helplessness they display does a great disservice to the film’s overall effect.

On the whole, “Brother No.2” is not a convincing documentary about the Khmer Rouge regime and its human cost. If its aim was to enhance knowledge and understanding of the subject, it failed to achieve it. After watching, I couldn’t say that I had understood or learnt anything I didn’t know in advance. The picture remains at the surface of all its big themes: pain, suffering, terror and justice.

One insight can be salvaged, however. It comes in the form of a comment made by an NGO spokesperson or representative who works with some of the deeply traumatized victims. It really draws on first-hand life experience and is one of those universally human revelations that we watch such heavy themed documentaries for: “Reconciliation is very personal”. Alright; but as an approach to such a highly emotive and charged topic as genocide, the picture, any documentary in fact, simply cannot stop there.

It opens on a black screen and to traffic noise. A man returns home from work, sits down to read the newspaper and observes a crack in the ceiling. The television newscast reports the same as he has just read so he gets up and strangles his wife in the kitchen. Please make up your mind quickly whether this makes any sense to you or not, then watch HERE.

For the rest of the film the viewer is in pretty much the same situation as the aforementioned protagonist, He Zhiyuan played by John Low – almost. With astonishing ease you enter into the situation you were just about to question, as you are welcomed into Island Hospital: the pars pro toto setting which from here on serves as more than just the background to a story. An unseen film crew observes, interviews, witnesses the goings-on at this place, recording the lives and varying states of convalescence of some ten inmates and additional staff. For this is a medical detention facility after all, a forensic psychiatry that we are in, and while you won’t ever risk forgetting about the fact that it is the criminally insane you keep company with, you will wonder about the condition of those outside. Are they the criminally sane?

At this point I have to sincerely proclaim with the proud voice of the reviewer that it is a trapping quality of this movie that I shall not indulge in attempting to be (or sound) any smarter than the subject I am to write about. This because HERE, without any question, is a very smart film, carefully written and full of interlinear wordplay. It is preoccupied with the frame set by the workings of that hospital and the special form of therapy practiced therein, and the patients to a lesser extent. In essence it is a mind game on film; and this could be pretty dull. But it isn’t. HERE is one of those well-crafted films that feature a different surface value much like an aftertaste, and are therefore intriguing to watch – if, that is, you are inclined to think about what you see and can actually enjoy the process.
Advanced viewing or not, there is a method to the madness shown here, and it comes well packaged in little episodes, the kind of observations a documentary filmmaker would be keen on making when trying to re-present the inner life of Island Hospital. Accordingly, a number of these criminals who are at a pathological discord with reality step forth to tell their story, but they do it twice. The second take comes as part of their treatment, a method designed to unravel the act of their misdeeds by playing it out in front of a camera. In their performance they are made to alter the pivotal scene and gear their respective fates towards a better ending.

This straightforward procedure is fittingly called “videocure” and largely what the film revolves around. We see how the patients respond differently to this form of therapy, for whom it works and for whom it does not. He Zhiyuan for one, who lost his voice after the murder of his wife, does recover. Or at least that is what we learn from the doctors’ statements recorded as part of the enveloping inquiry that is the eclectic (and telling) paradigm of HERE. Everybody is talking to the camera in this film at some point, if only during the shooting of the films within the larger picture.

The mise en abyme as practiced in HERE is not just fancy dressing in terms of cinematic strategy but smoothly sinks into the fabric of the story, for a story it is. Once you accept your assigned role as a viewer – or rather the sufficiently specific proposition the film makes – that you are in fact sitting in on the videocure yourself, perhaps by just as much as taking it seriously, then you will know it really is about observation, about watching the watcher. Close to the method of that crude therapy which, so goes the explanation, heals by re-enactment, you are invited to reflect on film and film’s reflection and the editing voice is a voice over narrative that strategically falsifies a memory – or an experience.

But please: forget after reading! HERE offers a viewing thesis that is entertaining to the intellectually receptive, and while it dresses up the emotional make of its cast, it probably does so with a lot less make-up than your everyday reality. Everything is about getting behind the situation in this picture. Re-enactment and simulation – only two of a plethora of handy vocabulary to adorn any staple postmodernist conversation for sure. They not only fit the story, but they are the whole point of this movie. Luckily, we are spared the discourse on a strictly referential level. What statements are made by the staff and psychiatric doctors, they are always undermined by the clinical state they are in – all of them, medical personnel included.

HERE consists of scenic shots and wide angles that are rhythmically interspersed with the interview set-up of people directly speaking to the viewer. The scenery of Island Hospital is completely devoid of wonders, but full of routine. Nothing is hidden, and no-one is flying over the cuckoo’s nest here. For a closed setting internment film, the place is oddly indistinct, almost as if it were too plain, or too unspecific, to make much fuss about it. Instead, this sweeping treatment adds to the eerie sense of normalcy the picture exudes most of the time, and which makes it so easy to get into the motion. Together with the harmonious, even pacing of the film, it is possible to enjoy its near decorative detachment from the characters we get to know in close succession, but only barely, as individual cases.

As they tell us why they are there, we understand that the inmates have all at some point in their lives fallen out with society for infanticide, as kleptomaniacs or split personalities. They are all curious objects to the camera gaze, moving about slowly under heavy medication as they are detained in the hospital’s garden idyll and their own induced drowsiness. A certain chill permeates everything. The analogy of presenting the world as stage, or the world as a madhouse, is well known and has been tested many times before.

In this case, the idea of therapy through film is touching as it is comical and, as self-consciousness gets sought in the image, can be very funny indeed. A parable the film sure is; it is not a satire. That, after all, wouldn’t yield much, only caricature, at best. And then, one can detect a strain of post-colonial commentary in it as well, with the post-colonial experience being not unlike a neurotic voice over, and it is in the choice of the cast for the doctors as well as in the architecture and interiors.

There is something calm and sedated about the film, but it is not serene. The beauty is in the many combinations and variations it runs through, but the discoveries to be made unfortunately don’t take very long. It contains many a sparkling quote and some profoundly smart lines, but most of it is too readily accessible. In all, HERE is lacking in the mystery in detail; perhaps there is simply too much light in its images – a characteristic feature of clinical psychology and byproduct of the diagnostics and treatment practiced at Island Hospital.

At times it feels like a classy dress laid out as plain cloth. But such is the style of Ho Tzu Nyen’s films and you are invited to like it or not. As a slow paced film with nothing much happening, it is a tad docile, maybe, but I really like the voices. Still, for all its tranquillity, it is not as intuitively brilliant as Apichatpong’s films and filmic in-conclusions. That the story should end as a loop in my view weakens the narrative strategy.

A strong opening and a strong soundtrack, a carefully developed script and good editing – such are the ingredients of this remarkably mature debut feature by Ho Tzu Nyen, which deservedly premiered at Cannes in May and makes it to the local screen at The Picturehouse and the Cathay this week. HERE is well worth watching; it ranks among the best and most expressive films yet to come out of Singapore. It practices a distinct cinematic and narratological style without exercising the camp notion of the established avant-garde (which indeed it bears ample reference to). For some, it may even work as therapy to readjust their filmic taste-buds. Knowing full well that it won’t work its charms on just anybody, I recommend this subtle mind adventure trip – certainly to you who have already bothered to read thus far.

Are you feeling blue? Depressed? Or is it rather black-and-white, with a little more contrast to show? The latter in any case is what you will be treated to in Looi Wan Ping’s directorial debut, White Days, which screened at SIFF just recently. But don’t jump to conclusions too quickly about what to expect from this picture. If anything, it is strictly formula-defying. Not in a spectacular way, but laid-back and conveniently unpolished.

Two guys, Chris and Daniel, one girl, Vel, and an absence: the friend who Daniel had planned to travel to Taipei with but who got killed in a road accident such is the catalytic moment to set off a motion. It is an intervention of fate and fate’s blindness, the aftereffects of which we are made to see in this film. In White Days the result is no triangle. Rather, the film’s protagonists move in parallel and only converge temporarily over their lost friend. Soon enough it becomes obvious how Daniel is the most affected and heavily depressed by the loss that gets measured by a routine: he keeps revisiting the site to lay down flowers and seems too consumed to engage in much of a conversation besides. But there are hidden dynamics at play that continuously hint at a plot which isn’t there, and the ensuing tension is really in the picture (not the story). These three in their early twenties are matched by friendship; they bump into each other or sit down to talk the arrangement is varied and not always entirely natural; but it is intriguing to watch even so.

What fascination White Days holds for the viewer, it really originates in the extensive dialogues and occasional sermons delivered in the very local, struggling quality that so defines Singlish among the generation portrayed. Talk is dominating whatever else contributes to the meandering story, and slowly we get to know some detail about the three, their background, situation and aspirations. Vel wants to make a trip to Taiwan for it seems an attractive place she’s seen in the movies before; Chris reveals his Christian faith and he begins to explicate his motivations for what appears to have been a surprise pilgrimage to Jerusalem not too long ago. All the while, Daniel keeps silent but company with his friends nonetheless.

There are many conversations in this film. In fact, they are what it is almost entirely made of, and not all of them are terribly sharp but funny at times. They largely revolve around themes of death and faith and this small group of friends seems bound by a need to converse and console, albeit in very different fashion. Chris for one evolves into an excessive talker over the course of the film. His speech follows in the vein and phraseology of Christian evangelical push-talk, or some crude version of it, as he elaborates and improvises about his views at some length over a number of prolonged scenes. True, these can be tiring to sit through. Only, on hearing him go on and on it becomes apparent that he clearly needs the others to join him in prayer for his own consolation, and this mismatching situation is just light enough to be bearable although in between you inevitably will want him to simply shut up. As they sit crouched on a sidewalk you can also observe Daniel (the actor) struggle with his part and trying not to laugh, and since the scene is not meant to lead anywhere, anyhow, it seems oddly fitting.

Later, Chris and Daniel are flipping through a pile of pictures that Chris brought back from his very personal journey to have a first-hand look at some prominent religious sites in Israel. At some point in his monologue those images come under scrutiny for being the touristy snapshots they are and upon reflection some very rewarding doubts are voiced. Towards the end of the film Chris will be sitting on the ledge of his room’s only window, and it will be another comment on taking a leap of faith; or the camera does it for him. This is because there is some subtle widening of the shot in this one; as in an earlier scene, where there is a slow dolly movement to track Daniel’s struggle in letting go of his pain and attachment to mourn the tragic loss of his friend. These are two of only very few directorial interventions, and they are pointed, effective and clear. They compliment the temperature of a film that is not as random as it may seem, but intelligently lends itself to the play and interaction of its cast with a minimal amount of calculation and guidance.

Let’s not forget that White Days is a funny movie, enervating as it is entertaining, and this annoying quality is quite endearing. Technically speaking, there isn’t much of accomplished editing in it, or acting, or sound design, or cinematographic finesse. But its candour in showing the twisted truth of documenting pieces of performance manages to capture something about Singaporean mentality which is so common it mostly escapes our notice. This may not be terribly important; but it feels very much alive on screen and there is accomplishment in that. Eventually, it is the very down-to-earth human element (for example when Daniel opens up to Vel a bit more, and playfully) which lends a more tangible substance to the film than just its drifting charm.

The first feature-length film by any young director has special significance by definition and to follow in the tracks of whatever auteur before you poses a challenge of managing expectations. Soft-spoken filmmaker Looi Wan Ping, who has previously been noted for his contributions as DoP in different formats (Anthony Chen’s Haze among them) apparently stayed true to his temper in directing White Days. Being a low key art-house endeavour, it really is a film about windows. This is not just for the many long takes it is made of, which have a tendency to produce a showcasing or gazing aspect rather than a precise POV. Windows, more significantly, play a major part in the overall composition: Be it in Chris’ apartment or when we observe Vel working at her computer in what could be a shared office; and equally so in the void deck’s typical architecture of vistas and partial recesses that share some of the characteristics of a window frame, not incidentally. Some of these windows are actually marked as exits (mock-macabre or not) but even if not serving to that end, true enough, they have the capacity.

Looi Wan Ping has discovered something about film, one very significant propensity this medium has, which is its openness to deliver a self-revealing textual design. This quality doesn’t come with treatment nor proper construction, but needs to be given the space and some screen time to come into its own. White Days may very well be the least controlled Singaporean feature film ever, and it is in letting go that its directorial paradigm takes a minor yet enlightening flight. It is a road movie, only at a snails pace. Or maybe the marginal movement is vertical rather than to be measured in linear progress. It is timed as idleness but the workings are all there: internal, but not beyond perception and on almost involuntary display the truthfulness of surface, as the director put it in the Q&A. And really, there is no better way of describing the very essence of film.

White Days is a quintessentially Singaporean movie. So much of the place is in its people talking to one another, especially where that talk is fragmented, filled with gaps and fuelled by reluctance. It should be very interesting to see how audiences abroad, total first-timers to the Singapore experience will react. Whether they can to some extent get past that first layer (or shield) of speech should help to establish the movie’s ultimate value over time. Overall, there is a tendency to overrate the film, which is an inclination only loosely related to its cinematic merits. But then again, it successfully turns an assumed weakness into an entertaining strength and for the individual portraits it features as much as for the approach chosen, White Days is an impishly enjoyable debut that is notable for being so relaxed; and this in itself is refreshing.