At The Movies: In Yeo Siew Hua’s Stranger Eyes, the voyeur becomes the viewed

Stranger Eyes (NC16)

126 minutes, opens exclusively at The Projector on Jan 9
★★★★☆

The story: Junyang (Wu Chien-ho) and Peiying (Anicca Panna) are devastated when their toddler goes missing at a playground in Singapore. They begin receiving mysterious videos showing that their everyday movements are being recorded. Using information from the police investigation, the young couple decide to take matters into their own hands.

Stranger Eyes opens showing a happy couple playing with their kid, then the camera pulls back to reveal that the audience is watching a home video. In later scenes, video footage – much of it filmed without the subject’s consent or even knowledge – forms what viewers see on screen.

In the award-winning A Land Imagined (2018), Singaporean film-maker Yeo Siew Hua tackled the irony of a Singaporean identity formed from the labour of an unseen underclass of migrant workers.

In Stranger Eyes, a Singapore-Taiwan-France-United States production, he explores a modern paradox: Your safety is guaranteed only to the extent to which you are willing to give up your privacy.

The incident that kicks off the journey is a child abduction, a nightmare so shattering, it breaks the core beliefs of the parents at its centre.

They live in a Housing Board estate, which they had assumed to be their sanctuary, an idea shared by most of their neighbours. Some residents are annoyed that news of the missing child has soured opinions about what was presumed to be a safe area.

At first, the story unfolds as a crime procedural, seen from the perspective of the distraught parents. A shift occurs later when another viewpoint emerges, that of neighbour Lao Wu (Lee Kang-sheng). His unsettling observations reveal that the narrative being shown thus far is at best incomplete or, worse, misleading. His intentions form the film’s central mystery – who is he and what are his goals?

Lee, Panna and Wu slide into their roles so smoothly, it is hard to tell they are Taiwanese – a fact that Yeo adroitly disguises by keeping dialogue to a minimum and steering clear of over-compensation, such as by having them speak Singlish or Manglish.

As in A Land Imagined, Yeo puts audiences into uncomfortable situations in which they must make judgments about what they are seeing.

He starts with questions about society, such as where does justified surveillance end and voyeurism begin? What are people to make of mothers who pretend they are childless? Can one be held accountable for what one does at home if one’s HDB window is left open?

Yeo also wades into deeper psychological waters, asking audiences to ponder the act of seeing and its opposite, wilful blindness.

This is not a tidy movie by any definition. Its philosophical interludes and pensive silences are challenging, and the lives of its main characters are messy. But few film-makers here can match Yeo’s ability to ask heavy questions with such a light touch.

Hot take: A straightforward crime story takes on strange, twisty turns that reveal Singaporean attitudes towards surveillance and privacy.