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Siew Hua Yeo (Singapore, 1985) debuted with
Daocao Wu/ In the House of Straw (2009).
Huan Tu/ A Land Imagined (2018) is an almost supernatural thriller of sorts in which dream and reality definitely get mixed up and the two protagonists or dreamers merge despite the huge gap in their backgrounds.
Police Officer Lok and his partner are looking for
a worker who has disappeared: Wang (a Chinese).
The two cops visit the construction site where Wang worked and the workers' dormitory where he slept. The business is part of a land-reclamation project. The boss and his nephew Jason do not cooperate, but a worker tells the cop that Wang is an insomniac who never sleeps at the dormitory and that he broke an arm.
The worker says that Wang is friend with a Bangladeshi worker: Ajit (a Bangladeshi). Except that Ajit too has disappeared.
We see that Lok too is an insomniac. Lok lies down in Wang's bed and sees from the window the lights of a 24-hour cybercafe. He walks there and checks out the customers. The place is run by a rude young woman, Mindy. Lok tells his partner that he dreamt of Wang. A flashback or his dream shows us how Wang got injured, how the boss gave him the job of driver, how he met Ajit during a ride, how he became addicted to the cybercafe, how Mindy took pity at him after realizing that Wang never slept. Ajit's mother lost a leg but Ajit cannot travel back to visit her because he owes the company money and the company holds his passport. While Wang is at the cyber cafe we hear a customer making a scene. One day Ajit disappeared. Jason told Wang that Ajit went back to this country. Wang broke into Jason's office and checked the passports: Ajit's passport was still there, proof that Jason was lying. Wong searched for Ajit and found his corpse buried in the sand of the beach. We then see a truck chased Wang trying to kill him. This seems to be the end of Lok's dream.
Now we see Wang, who still cannot sleep, back at the cybercafe playing his favorite video game in which he always gets killed and someone starts chatting with him over the computer, a mysterious troll.
Mindy says he can help him sleep and then we see him playing the same videogame at the cyber cafe but his voiceover now talks In the past tense about him saying that he slept well and dreamed his own death, disappearing in his own dream. He dreamt of two cops investigating his disappearance. He knows that one of the two will soon be injured because Wang is talking from the future Describing what happened in his dream back then.
And so now we see Lok and his partner entering the cybercafe and asking Mindy about Wang.
Lok finds Wang's password and communicates with the mysterious troll who repeats what Wang said: that his partner will soon be injured. Seconds later a young kid tries to run away, the partner chases him and falls down the stairs. The kid flees but gets run over by a car.
Lok returns to the cyber cafe and checks Wang's browsing history. We now hear a customer yelling at Mindy, the same scene we've seen before.
Lok returns to the construction site and asks Jason what they're working on. Jason takes him on a boat to view the reclaimed beach that has been built with their sand.
Jason then takes Lok to talk to Ajit... But we see that he is a different Bangladesh person.
Lok too is sleep-deprived. He keeps visiting the cyber cafe and playing the video game.
A troll sends him a video of Wang.
We hear again the customer yelling atd Mindy, the same scene we've seen before.
Then Mindy slaps and kicks out a kid who is playing at another station.
Mindy finally opens up to Lok. She offers to take him to Wang.
She takes him to a bonfire on the reclaimed beach, where migrant workers are dancing wildly.
Lok joins the dances, then notices a solitary man staring at the sea.
We only see in the back of this person, and we can only guess whether that is Wang.
And this seems to be the end of Wang's dream.
Mo Shi Lu/ Silent Recording/ Stranger Eyes (2024), photographed by Hideho Urata, is a drama of lonely alienated voyeurs.
Co-protagonists are the surveillance cameras that watch people at every corner of the city. While perceived as evil, they are the ones they clarify who is good and who is evil. It's a camera that reveals the kidnapper, and cameras reveal a lot of what lies behind the kidnapping including the sins of the victims and the moving kindness of their stalker.
Who is the real protagonist of the film? The cheating amoral father or the silent devoted father?
The film opens with the home video of two parents, Junyang and Peiying, playing with their toddler daughter Bo in a park, apparently a happy couple filmed by Junyang’s mother Shuping. We then see the same couple looking very anxious: Her daughter has been kidnapped three months before and the cops, led by detective Zheng, don't have any lead yet. The mother has been distributing flyers at the playground where the girl disappeared when Junyang lost sight of her, asking for help from the public but one woman angrily reproaches her that now the playground is deserted because everybody fears there's a pervert around. Junyang, angry at this cold-hearted mother, follows silently into a shopping mall, touches and almost still here baby. When he returns home, he finds Peiying watching a new video that has been delivered on DVD by someone. The video was filmed months earlier. Another DVT arrives and this time it shows Junyang minutes earlier following the woman into the shopping mall and even touching her hair. They live in an apartment of a high-rise building and Junyang young suspects someone is watching them from the high-rise building across from theirs. Later he returns to the shopping mall and sees a British tourist filming him. He runs after him and takes his camera. He is arrested for stealing. Zheng releases him and explains that the tourist had nothing to do with the case, and instead the cameras captured the man who delivers the DVDs.
More discs arrive, which reveal that the couple was not a happy couple.
The cops Interrogate the woman who lives in the apartment across.
She is an elderly woman who is basically blind And lives with the son who is not there.
The film then focuses on her son, Lao Wu (played by Kang-sheng Lee), a sullen middle-aged supermarket manager
which we recognize as the man captured on camera. A flashback shows that he once saw on the store's surveillance cameras that Junyang abandoned the toddler in a shopping cart and walked away.
[The film never shows how the toddler was returned to the couple].
When he returns home to his mother, we see that he indeed spies on the couple from his window. He and his mother are aware that the couple frequently argues and the mother remarks that some people should not have a child. At the same time, His mother urges Lao Wu to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
We see that Lao Wu is an avid follower of Peiying's live-streaming channel of electronic dance music. In fact he got hold of her phone number and exchanges teasing text messages with her.
Lao Wu also spies Junyang at work and films him having sex with a coworker and her boyfriend in the locker room. Lao Wu is visibly shaken by the scene.
We see that Lao Wu followed Junyang carry little Bo to the playground and watched the toddler played with the other children.
Somehow Peiying senses that her number-one fan is watching her at the supermarket via the security cameras and she teases him playing with items along the aisles.
Finally, the detective identifies the man caught on camera as Lao Wu, and they realize he lives in the apartment across from theirs, but they found nothing suggesting could have kidnapped the toddler, so Lao Wu is released.
Junyang is convinced that Lao Wu abducted his daughter and begins secretly stalking him. The roles are now inverted. Junyang follows Lao Wu to an indoor skiing venue and sees him videotaping. Junyiang enters Law Wu's apartment at night while Lao Wu's mother is sleeping and steals a bag full of DVDs.
Meanwhile, Peiying sets a trap: she invites Lao Wu to a meeting in a dance club. First she tries to seduce him and then pulls out a knife but Lao Wu keeps repeating that he doesn't know what happened to the toddler. Furious, Peiying stabs him in the belly.
[She never gets charged or arrested by the police for this]
Junyang watches the videos that he stole from who including the one of the tragic day when the toddler disappeared. Lao Wu was only interested in filming Junyang and didn't film what happened to the toddler. We see the Junyang lied about being distracted by a phone call. Surprisingly, the toddler is found by the police and it is proven the Lao Wu had nothing to do with the kidnapping. The police simply watched all the recordings of all the security cameras in the neighborhood and realized that the toddler wandered away and was taken by amother who had just lost a baby looking just like Bo. The evidence is now overwhelming that Junyang let the girl be kidnapped. Peiying moves out with Bo and Junyang breaks down in front of his mother. Lao Wu survived the stabbing.
Junyang has one more mission. He visits the indoor skiing park where Lao Wu was secretly has been secretly videotaping an attendant,
a young woman named Ling Po. Junyang Let her believe that he's talking her because he has a crush on her but eventually leaves her the videos that Lao Wu made of her and Junyang found in the bag that he stole.
She is Lao Wu’s estranged daughter. He has been watching and recording her from a distance for years. One moving video confesses all of this and wishes her a happy birthday. This brings Ling Po to tears.
The film closes with Junyang watching Peiying and their daughter from a distance at a park and his silent sullen behavior reminds us of Lao Wu, implying that Lao Wu started his voyeur career precisely when he realized the mistake he made and because it was separated from his daughter.
Lao Wu, expelled from her life, started videotaping his daughter, then realized that across his apartment a story similar to his own was taking place, with the younger Junyiang making the same mistake he made as a young man, and so Lao Wu started videotaping also Junyiang.
Junyiang is now condemned to live alone with his mother, just like Lao Wu.
However, Junyiang sort of redeemed himself by helping Lao Wu reconnect with his daughter.
(Copyright © 2024 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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