Film picks: Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, Cinema Reclaimed, Joyland
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Marcel The Shell With Shoes On combines stop-motion animation with live-action footage.
PHOTO: MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON/FACEBOOK
Follow topic:
Marcel The Shell With Shoes On (PG13)
89 minutes, available on Apple TV+, 4 stars
Marcel is an adorable, single-eyed, one-inch-tall (2.5cm) seashell who wears shoes and lives with his grandmother Nana Connie in a Los Angeles house, sleeping on a slice of bread. A film-maker begins posting his everyday adventures and turns the mollusc into an Internet sensation with tens of millions of fans.
The film is as quirky as it sounds, yet wholly believable, thanks to the naturalistic integration of stop-motion and live-action footage that reaped best animation nominations at the 2023 Academy Awards, British Film Academy Awards and Golden Globes.
The comedic mockumentary is an expansion of the YouTube series of the same title, created by Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate in 2010.
Camp writes, directs and appears in a thin fictionalisation of himself as the film-maker here.
Actress-comedienne Slate voices Marcel in a baby-like pitch, and whenever Marcel threatens to become cloyingly cutesy, he charms with his innocent humour and surprises with his insights. For example, an “audience” is not a “community”, he observes of his social media fans overrunning his front lawn to snap selfies.
Camp and Slate debuted their original shorts as a married couple. Their divorce by the time they made the movie – a shared labour of love – adds to Marcel’s heartfelt ruminations on grief, separation and loneliness.
Joyland (R21)
Joyland is a Pakistani drama about a married man Haider (left) who falls in love with a trans woman Biba.
PHOTO: THE PROJECTOR
127 minutes, limited screenings at Projector X: Picturehouse
Included as part of indie cinema The Projector’s Pink Screen festival of LGBTQ+ films, the Pakistani drama Joyland has been praised by critic Glenn Kenny on the rogerebert.com website as being “a picture of considerable integrity, passion and bravery”.
Haider (Ali Junejo) lives in Lahore with his wife and other members of his family. Through a friend, he finds a job as a backup dancer at a racy cabaret. There, he becomes drawn to transgender woman Biba (Alina Khan), an attraction that will change his life.
Film-maker Saim Sadiq’s debut feature was at first banned by the Pakistani authorities, who then had a change of heart and made the film the country’s official entry to the Best International Feature category of the Academy Awards. It became the first film from that country to make the December shortlist. The drama also won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
Where: 05-01 The Cathay, 2 Handy Road theprojector.sg/films-and-events/joyland
MRT: Dhoby Ghaut/Bras Basah
When: June 1, 8pm, and June 17, 8pm
Tickets: $15 for standard ticket prices
Info:
Cinema Reclaimed: Driving, Kicking And Punching
Lim Kay Tong stars in Perth (2004), a drama about alienation and identity in Singapore.
PHOTO: CINEMA RECLAIMED
The National Heritage Board’s Singapore HeritageFest is an annual celebration of culture and heritage and Cinema Reclaimed is its film strand.
The curators – lecturer and writer Ben Slater with artist and researcher Toh Hun Ping – have created an accessible and offbeat programme of Singapore films that explore this year’s themes of sport and transport.
In 2004, United States-based, Singapore-born film-maker Djinn – whose real name is Ong Lay Jinn – released Perth (M18, 107 minutes, screens on Sunday, 5pm), a movie that tackles the trauma of being among the unseen in Singapore.
Lim Kay Tong plays Harry Lee, a 50-something security guard and taxi driver for whom the idea of emigration to the city of the title offers much-needed solace.
Lim Kay Tong and Ivy Cheng star in Perth (2004).
PHOTO: CINEMA RECLAIMED
Slater says that Lim “gives a bold and incendiary performance”.
“Perth was divisive on release, as some viewers found it very extreme. Rewatching it years later, one can see that its tonal changes make more sense when viewed as a very dark comedy, and an aggressive response to certain stereotypes of Singapore as a clean and polite society,” he says.
Lead actors Lim, Sunny Pang and other members of the cast and crew will be present for a post-screening question-and-answer session.
Where: Oldham Theatre, 1 Canning Rise str.sg/ioyb
MRT: City Hall/Dhoby Ghaut/Bras Basah
When: Till Sunday, various timings
Admission: Screenings are $10. Talks are free
Info: Go to
