We Are All Strangers Review: Anthony Chen Ends His ‘Growing Up’ Trilogy With An Unflattering Portrait Of Hard-Up Singapore

We Are All Strangers (PG13)

Starring Yeo Yann Yann, Koh Jia Ler, Andi Lim, Regene Lim

Directed by Anthony Chen

Singaporean director-writer-chronicler Anthony Chen's ‘Growing Up’ trilogy has taken 13 years to complete

This concluding film is his longest (two-and-a-half hours), most relatable and most punctured-Singapore-Dream inescapable for our low-income strugglers. Plagued by money woes, hounded by debt collectors, trapped in their limited societal space, they’re Chen's oft-depicted demo group.

Conversely, he doesn’t do so well with the landed-house, church-going middle class here. Their decisions seem iffy. The social divide looks clumsy and unconvincing.

In comparison, Chen’s HDB dwellers appear more real, less concocted, and certainly more interesting as they add truer, existential spice to our slices of life.

Away from the Filipino foreign-helper intrusion of Ilo Ilo (2013) and the extreme teacher-student sexual liaison in Wet Season (2019), this unconnected instalment is basic, unadorned and easily recognisable. With the cycle of tough-going in urban Singapore rendered so unyieldingly unforgiving, we’re talking prison time.

But in snatches of momentary bliss and temporary respite from the humdrum of day-to-day, the joy and elation reached here are so unencumbered, so palpable as to be akin to touching a poor man's paradise. To the extent that We Are All Strangers, in its later stage, actually adds an Anthony Chen rarity — comedy.

Trilogy returnees Yeo Yann Yann and Koh Jia Ler, previously horny lovers in Wet Season but now a thorny stepmum-stepson combo here, make you laugh when they attempt the income trend of our time ..... livestream selling.

And this pic, though lengthy, is a great totally-local impression of lives yearning to breathe out of tight, confined spaces. Shot completely in Singapore with even overhead bridges looking metaphorically layered. Unified by contrasts  — young vs old, rich vs poor, hope vs despair — which Chen is so good at capturing with quiet subversiveness.

This flick may seem bleak. But it carries a message of second, third, etc chances. If we want it.

“People in cars are just rushing. But on the bus, you get to see so much more,” goes the liberating lower-SES refrain.

On bus trips shot romantically, memorably, wonderfully by Chen, sit Yeo’s Lee Bee Hwa, a Malaysian-born kopitiam beer girl with a quick tongue. And Andi Lim’s Lim Boon Kiat, a widowed, reticent Hokkien mee seller wooing her with simple-man klutziness.

Quick aside. Veteran TV actor Lim is a real find who looks ready to join Mark Lee and Peter Yu as a fascinating older dude. Plus, his Hokkien mee looks delish. While Yeo seems too smart to be pushing beer from table to table. Her sharp eyes give her away.

The pair are this tale’s mature responsible heart. Traversing a middle-aged shot at starting over with the excitement of virginal flirters who are contented in their time and place.

Their ages, era and mindset are utterly different from the restless younger generation embodied here by Boon Kiat’s just army ORD-ed, bad-boy son, Junyang. The lad shotgun-marries his English-educated, higher-class, worlds-apart girlfriend, Lydia (actual university grad Regene Lim), after impregnating her.

Relationship, sex, even weddings — Bee Hwa to Boon Kiat, Junyang to Lydia — are conducted so differently by everybody as to be otherworldly alien events.

“How can you trust a boy you met at a BTS concert?” pleads Regene’s mum (Petrina Kow) whose snooty exasperation segues into a too-quick acceptance that befuddles when you expect hellfire and brimstone.

I mean, the boy is a mischievous, no-good punk who loses jobs, gets drunk and sneak-crashes even the House of God whom any protective mother would exorcise ASAP. Director Chen struggles to make us believe his handling of this primarily boring, hard-to-dramatise social group.

But we overlook this drawback because an Anthony Chen HDB family isn’t a Jack Neo one. There’s no whitewashing with dialect jokes. This is domestic laundry which many of us bumping into each other from room to room, block to block see, know and similarly do.

Bee Hwa clashes with stepson Junyang who hops past a checklist of typical SG jobs — property agent, delivery rider, van driver — until they seemingly hit the jackpot of liveselling unlicensed wellness supplements like a comedic duo. Yeo and Koh’s recycled chemistry comes to good fore here.

It alleviates the constant reminders in this story of how this land is basically a place for the rich with many, many concrete-jungle inhabitants needing to somehow make do.

We Are All Strangers isn't a flattering portrait of Singapore.

But through the humanscape of Anthony Chen’s people stumbling past the landscape of hard, urban Singapore, it's a necessary, familiar and ultimately compelling one. (3.5/5 stars) now in cinemas

Photos: Giraffe Pictures