Some Women (R21)
70 minutes, opens March 24, 4 stars
This documentary is several things. It is a street-level history of the transgender community in Singapore, outlines the issues affecting them and depicts how the movement today helps victims of discrimination.
But at the heart of it - and this is perhaps why it won the Audience Choice Award at 2021's Singapore International Film Festival - is the moving autobiographical portrait of film-maker Quen Wong.
In today's lingo, the 46-year-old trans woman could be accused of having too much "main character energy", but in this film, she earns the right to take centre stage. The revelations, put plainly before the camera, must have required that she stifle every instinct that told her to protect her privacy.
Wong's framing is heartrending. The physical self can be altered, but self-acceptance is much harder. Decades of being told that one is not a real woman leaves a mark, she says.
In a show of candidness rarely seen in a Singapore documentary, she reveals what she used to be, and her life today as a wife, daughter and aunt to her nieces.
The present-day scenes, set in the Housing Board flats of Wong's family, are relatable and startlingly poignant because Wong has explained the work it took for her to enjoy the simple domestic pleasures most of us take for granted.
She includes interviews with Ms Sanisa, who offers a peek into her life at Bugis Street, a place romanticised by Westerners from the 1950s to the 1980s. Ms Sanisa's memories are sweetly nostalgic, but her views also offer a corrective to the notion, seen in several films, of the street as an anything-goes haven. For trans women, making a living there could be dangerous, but they had few other options.
In contrast, younger trans woman Lune Loh dares to break down doors and is willing to risk arrest for doing so.
Their stories add depth and perspective to Wong's own frank and deeply moving account.
Everything Everywhere All At Once (M18)
140 minutes, opens March 24, 4 stars
For a taste of the style of American directing team Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert - collectively known as Daniels - watch their music video for Turn Down For What , a song by DJ Snake and Lil Jon, on YouTube, which has garnered more than a billion views.
The same manic energy, madcap humour and love of riotous action are packed into Everything Everywhere All At Once - an eye-popping package that left this reviewer reeling. Imagine The Matrix (1999), but with jokes about sentient raccoons, to get a sense of the goings-on in this blend of comedy, science fiction and action.
Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) runs a failing coin laundry with husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). She is miserable - her business is to be audited by mean-spirited tax officer Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis); her judgmental father (James Hong) has just moved into her home; and her lesbian daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is getting serious with a white woman.
That is when the harried businesswoman and unhappy wife discovers that she is a key player in a multiverse war, with versions of her who are competent, wealthier, happier and skilled at fighting. Cue gongfu battles and mind-warpingly rapid cuts showing copies of Evelyn, Joy and Waymond scattered across several universes.
Those who enjoyed Daniels' Swiss Army Man (2016) - a movie that rendered every fart joke coming before or since obsolete - will see that while they have moved on from using intestinal gas as punchlines, they have retained the same fondness for prop-based gags.
These - which involve shout-outs to works such as American animated series Rick And Morty (2013 to present) and Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai's romantic drama In The Mood For Love (2000) - are all in service of a serious message about how, even if you can leap across timelines and realities, you cannot get away from yourself.
That particular point gets a little lost in the chaos, but it is there, and it is heartfelt.
Titane (R21)
108 minutes, opens March 24, not reviewed
Kinky sex and body horror combine in this work from French film-maker Julia Ducournau.
Winner of the Palme d'Or at 2021's Cannes Film Festival, it also earned Ducournau a Best Director nomination at the British Academy Film Awards earlier this month.
Alexia (played as an adult by Agathe Rousselle) begins to act strangely after suffering head trauma as a child, which has resulted in her skull carrying a titanium plate. Few people, least of all her parents, suspect the depth of her need for violence.
