
The premise is reminiscent of Michael Haneke’s film, Caché: a couple receives a disc in the mail that contains footage of them secretly filmed going about their lives. Just like the film of Haneke, which took this ostensible plot device and transformed it into a rather bloated sociopolitical context, Stranger Eyes, which is a slippery, shape-shifting psychodrama, focuses on more questions than just one who is actually observing who? Getting to a first question in an unexpected manner and then going deeper, looking for the more profound aspects of human nature and interactions, Yeo Siew Hua’s third feature somehow manages to sensually unveil a film that hides a shattered heart underneath its ‘cool’ cinematic style.
In 2018, Yeo was grasped by the auteur title when he won the top prize at Locarno, following the release of his previous feature, a fluorescent neo-noir titled “A Land Imagined”. In that case, after the quiet of an experimental breath that was his 2009 debut ‘In the House of Straw, he makes an announcement for himself in which he develops an inclination with genre-styled narratives which include the abuse of time in their structure while being aware of social matters. “Stranger Eyes” is similarly atmospheric and contains non-linear narrative elements but it is also better and more entertaining as it gives more attention to character and emotions than the complexity of the plot progression. I mean, if Yeo’s proportion spoke such attention that the deal with Netflix was signed in the multi-territory rights, Yeo’s new title managed to at least get the same amount of international attention after its Paris on Venice competition.
With so many people sharing such a small space, it is highly unlikely that one’s activities can go off the radar, especially in a place as densely populated as Singapore, and it is this very theme that fuels this story. Junyang (Wu Chien-ho) and Peiying (Anicca Panna), the young couple at the film’s center, have very little room, they live in the kind of vast, grid-like high-rise, facing another vast, grid-like high-rise, that lends itself to ‘A Rear Window’ like scenario where what would be concealed goes up for a public display to be seen from the towering structure. And even where they’ve come to, which is their home, they also have company, and not just any company, but Junyang’s mother Shuping (Vera Chen), and their baby daughter Bo, so as the wind of tradition would have it in a place such as this, Junyang and Peiying’s relationship has suffered a little turbulence.
And that’s before Bo goes unaccountably missing one day, a crisis that is very soon followed by the introduction of that dreadful DVD, and then some more that follow its lead, showing ordinary household activities and the more personal ones as well. The attempts at the couple’s stalking and the child’s apparent kidnapping seem to have a deep connection and bear witness to, but looking into the case police Zheng (Jeff Teo) looking for pointers to ‘offers’ scrutiny only gives vague to Zheng while ensuring that a CCTV camera positioned outside their door- yet another spying device in a ‘already fitting in with the pots’ when it comes to a high notch city. ‘There’
There is no need for a spoiler alert since this tragi-comedy, the spy-versus-spy narrative is a spy-trai-c-I mean, a tale in which reliance is placed on the abilities of Wu (Lee Kang-sheng), the melancholy romantic. Wu’s foil, a man who has sad eyes, is middle-aged and stays with his old mother in the house across the street which is located deep in a spy tech story. However, the eerie tapes serve the purpose of being, not a red herring, to the watchers but more like the trigger to the first beat of an awkward and strange waltz to the characters that allows Junyang and Peiying to panic at the thought of strangers. The couple’s search for their daughter exposes their vulnerabilities both towards each other and their insecurities as parents.
Just when you feel like you’ve figured out the film, it pulls another temporal twist, To the point where we are first confused as to where the time went and what direction it was. As more of the family life timeline is developed, it is Anak Chiu’s nagging manufactured eye that essentially explains to us how little Junyang and Peiying ever really saw each other.
That Wu is played by Taiwanese legend Lee, in probably the definitive celluloid performance of his life outside of his lifetime relationship with Tsai Ming-Liang, was an early tip-off that there was more to the character than what the eye or the grainy surveillance lens suggested. As “Stranger Eyes” shifts direction and narrows down on Wu and his oppressive silent self-isolation- which somehow didn’t make Lee play this character at all and how many different distant one-sided relationships he develops for the sole purpose of not feeling lonely in the world, it brings deep sadness to the level reserved for Lee in such a way that the sharpness of the narrative craft shimmers for Lee’s presence to be visually cool and for calm narratives to be made well timed.
There is undoubtedly a wider societal context that goes beyond just what is captured in the patriot’s mind, because, as “Stranger Eyes” muses, there is a gradual ‘screening’ of the private life and ‘densifying’ of the social.’ Zheng gives the couple his professional advice: “You only need to watch somebody for a long enough period, and regardless of whether he is a criminal or not, he will sooner or later become one.” To constantly remain in the thriller, paranoid, and taut modes that this film readily displays is one thing. It is also a love song in nostalgia’s key a character study of the times with a slightly melancholic undertone that Yeo’s film manages to capture in close-up.
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