The action tales place in present-day Singapore, a small and heavily monitored island-state. Two-year-old Bo has disappeared. A mysterious baby-snatcher operated while the mum was distracted in the local supermarket. The two adults are left pointing fingers at each other, trying to figure out what happened. Parallel to this, they begin to receive CDs containing images of their daily lives. The intrigue becomes increasingly confusing as the police step in, relying mostly on CCTV footage in order to investigate the disappearance. “Who needs officers going around when you have cameras everywhere?”, asks the local sheriff rhetorically.
The ensuing developments are extremely disjointed. It is borderline impossible to understand the minutiae of the intrigue. The 39-year-old and fairly experienced director – with five feature films under his belt, plus countless writing credits – borrows the surveillance stalker topic of Michael Haneke’s Hidden (2005) and throws in a couple Hitchcockian elements (such as voyeuristic shots a la Rear Window, from 1954) to empty results. The biggest point he’s trying to make is that no matter what you do, your actions are being captured – be that by CCTV, a camera, a mobile phone, or someone’s naked gaze. These various devices are utilised to exhaustion, offering nothing but such hackneyed takeaway. The filmmaker confirms this in his statement: “What does it mean to exist as merely an image to be perceived?”, he questions.
With a duration of more than two hours (126 minutes), Stranger Eyes feels interminable. A murder takes place, and a very clunky resolution is offered half an hour before the end, leaving the final quarter of the film as some sort of unofficial and redundant epilogue. And it isn’t just the script that’s patchy and jumbled. The first Singaporean movie ever to be selected for Venice’s main competitive strand fails to deliver on just about every level. The acting is wooden, the repetitive music score is irritating, and the cinematography is pedestrian and monotonous. There is nothing to rescue the movie from utter pointlessness and boredom.
Stranger Eyes premiered in the Official Competition of the 81st Venice International Film Festival, when tis piece was originally written. The UK premiere takes place in October, at the BFI London Film Festival. Just give it a miss.
