A transferring tableau vivant of some years within the lives of a fractured however in the end compassionate Singaporean working-class household, filmmaker Anthony Chen (“Ilo Ilo,” “Moist Season”) returns with a fifth function that’s as emotionally beneficiant as it’s frothily melodramatic — in methods which might be addictively entertaining, irritating, and in the end too empathetic to shun. We all know what chilly looks like at a pageant like Berlin, replete with arch, chilly European workout routines in nihilism; it’s a chilly that invitations us to understand the sheer heat of Chen’s contact, with the primary Singaporean movie ever to play within the occasion’s most important competitors.
Within the aptly titled “We Are All Strangers,” Chen introduces us early on to a cook dinner, a bartender, a schoolgirl, and her classmate, a beginner military conscript — all of whom emerge as each discovered and literal household on this overflowingly emotional saga. The arthouse references may sound arcane, however that is Chen’s most accessible and borderline business effort up to now.
Here’s a Singapore the place live-streaming medical provide gross sales and unregulated social media ecommerce are a method of dwelling, the place Hokkien noodles aren’t solely a scrumptious, chewy recipe at each meals stand, but additionally a method of survival. The place army service is obligatory, and will solely disappoint our greatest and even worst males, however could be interrupted, thank god, by life’s hairpin turns.
Boon Kiat (Andi Lim, a delicate efficiency with a lightweight contact) has for years run a noodle stand within the bustling Singapore capital metropolis, serving up wok-fried prawns to daytime and late-night prospects. On the stand to his left, Bee Hwa (Chen common Yeo Yann Yann, disarmingly humorous and wounding usually in the identical scene) serves beer to drunken patrons, working for suggestions whereas dwelling along with her brother and his small baby. Zooming out, Boon Kiat’s son Junyang (Koh Jia Ler, now greater than 10 years older than he was in “Ilo Ilo”) is headed for all times within the Singapore military at the same time as his girlfriend Lydia (Regene Lim) should watch him go. Till she receives some surprising information that you might predict from the logline, which sends the remainder of the film into movement.
Whereas Junyang and Lydia’s relationship curdles underneath the load of grownup accountability, Boon Kiat and Bee Hwa strike up a romance late in life. One night time, she’s past hammered, and he walks along with her to her residence, after which later proposes a candy date on the bus experience throughout her commute. Chen’s openhearted film makes nice use of the Singapore setting, exhibiting for instance, how with a public transportation meet-cute, a reference to somebody can bend the construction of your setting round you. Bee Hwa, after all, ultimately turns into Junyang’s stepmother, which is how we be taught that each he and Lydia come from single-parent households the place the opposite father or mother has been lacking (for various, pained causes) for a very long time. “We Are All Strangers” retains driving again towards this level about discovered household, which are sometimes the folks proper in entrance of you.
Boon Kiat, Bee Hwa, Junyang, and Lydia are quickly all shacked up in a cramped flat with just one rest room, and barely a partition to separate different folks from your enterprise. And so the harsher realities of life begin to float inward, although early on, Chen punctuates the anticipation of doable distress with an excellent sequence that seems to be a fantasy: Junyang imagines being in a luxurious resort with Lydia, her household bank card footing the invoice, a weekend of dancing and swimming forward of them. It’s the reprieve earlier than the storm of grown-up calls for about to inundate Junyang like a firehose burst. Who pays for this tiny condo? “Some persons are horrible husbands, however not less than they’re higher fathers,” Lydia tells him throughout a second of notably sharpened disaster.
“We Are All Strangers” caps a “rising up” trilogy Chen began with “Ilo Ilo” and “Moist Season.” When the characters are pressured to develop up, and the circumstances develop more and more tragic, is when the melodrama begins to bubble up at its sudsiest. Shot by cinematographer Teoh Homosexual Hian with an easy eye for the refreshingly well-lit, the film abruptly takes a tough proper into the realm of the crime drama!
Resulting from one more life change, Junyang and Bee Hwa should stoop to — properly, it feels low at first, till then it turns into fairly a giddy excessive — peddling over-the-border OTC medication on social media, Bee Hwa baiting live-streamers along with her life story. And with a number of pretend tears positioned within the eye simply out of body. There’s, actually, a whole lot of narrative chaos within the film’s final third, from a pyramid scheme that ruins Junyang’s skilled ego to the truth that Lydia, as soon as she’s given delivery, is mainly minimize out of the image. However Chen retains it transferring easily, even because the movie teeters on the sting of sentimentality — however why shouldn’t it? In the long run, we notice, “We Are All Strangers” is devoted to the filmmaker’s household.
The takeaways right here, aside from this film ought to play very properly around the globe and will even emerge as Singapore’s Oscar contender, embrace that among the many converging and careening characters, Yeo Yann Yann is the guts of “We Are All Strangers.” She’s a girl determined for a connection she doesn’t notice she needs, after which should take command of a household as a stepmother and caretaker to a frankly lazy, entitled child (who does ultimately develop up). She is the centerpiece beacon of hope in a film with no scarcity of it.
The category points in Singapore that Chen goals to characterize and critique principally come at us from a chicken’s-eye view, with a deeper curiosity in characters and their reality and emotions. As soon as the movie hurtles off the cliff into an underworld crime drama of mortgage sharks and unpaid money owed, you yearn for the easier instances earlier than. Simply as Junyang could also be holding onto that earlier imaginative and prescient of a gleaming resort. However this can be a wholehearted, emotional rush of a film that holds you within the palm of its hand all through.
Grade: B+
“We Are All Strangers” premiered on the 2026 Berlin Movie Pageant. It’s presently in search of U.S. distribution.
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