Yang Xiuhua’s twisty Singaporean thriller

and stranger’s eyesEmerging Singaporean filmmaker Yeo Siew Wah turns what at first glance seems like a hair-raising crime thriller into something more sly, powerful, and ultimately puzzling, yet still rooted in identifiable human fragility. After premiering in competition at Venice, this cerebral yet downbeat mediation on voyeurism, exhibitionism, identity, guilt and loss is already planning to travel to other film festivals – all that fun stuff – possibly for audiences outside of Asia. Niche releases bring critical support, especially among the cinephile market.

Young’s work is known for its playful, pretzel-like chronology and nested narratives, while stranger’s eyes He didn’t dive as far as he did imaginary land As soon as it entered the swimming pool, its feet were wet. Like its predecessor, it starts in the middle, then flashes back and drops in odd moments where time seems to shift for characters who overlap and run parallel to each other. There are many mirrored or doubled characters: for example, two fathers who neglect and fail their daughters; two mothers resentful of a career sacrificed for their children; and stalking those who set out to stalk their stalkers.

actual inciting incident in media resources But the film begins with the kidnapping of Bo Xilai, the toddler daughter of father Jun Yang (played by Wu Jianhao) and mother Peiying (played by Anika Panna). When we first see the couple making tearful appeals on television and social media for witnesses to come forward, they seem like sympathetic victims, devastated by the loss of their children. At the moment when Jun Yang was concentrating on playing with his mobile phone, someone kidnapped Bo from a nearby playground, but for the first time, the monitors throughout the park did not record the kidnapping. Nonetheless, investigating police officer Cheng (Pete Teo) is convinced that if they continue to comb through the vast amount of CCTV footage in the possession of the Singapore Police, they will catch someone doing something illegal and solve the case.

It turns out there’s more to the couple’s own story than meets the eye. Flashbacks and illicitly filmed footage – burned to DVD and then started slipping through their doors, reminiscent of Michael Haneke’s similar mail deliveries hidden — will reveal the deep rifts in Jun Yang and Pei Ying’s marriage. The two are not particularly devoted parents to poor Bo, partly due to the resentment and conflict that arises from having to share an apartment with Jun Yang’s selfish mother (Vera Chen). Former party girl and aspiring DJ Peiying misses her nightclub life and recreates it through her Discord channel, where she uploads videos of herself spinning discs. Jun Yang, an employee of the Zamboni Ice Arena who spends his days symbolically smoothing the worn surfaces, has been cheating on Peiying with a male colleague and a female colleague, having a threesome in the locker room. Who knew ice rinks were such hotbeds of kink?

We know this because part of the story also follows Lao Wu (Lee Kang-sheng, a longtime muse of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang), a lonely grocery store manager who seems obsessed with Pei-ying and lives in the couple’s home. opposite. Spoiler alert, though it’s not a big deal and it’s revealed early on: it was Wu who sent the DVD. Does this mean he is the one who kidnapped Bo? Or will the endless layers of surveillance and observation reveal a different truth about the abducted child, which bears repeating that no one was paying attention to her when she disappeared?

It’s an arthouse film festival entry, and by the time we get to the final reel, nothing can be fully satisfactorily explained. Instead, the characters begin to fracture and layer upon each other, like images in a kaleidoscope. DP Hideyuki Urata’s lighting becomes more terrifying and disorienting, coinciding with the jagged editing of the final sequence (Jean-Christophe Bouzy). But what keeps the film from becoming prime bait for high-end critics is the sincerity of the performances, especially the core trio of Wu, Lee and Penner, who each convey a profound sense of isolation that A sense of loneliness is particularly evident in their performances. In Singapore, this happens almost everywhere.