Late Shift by Edward Khoo has got all the right ingredients for the ten minute piece – nostalgic music, well-timed pacing of scenes, a good mix of characters and a male lead with an interesting face that seems to tell a story of its own without him saying a word. The Singapore American School alumni film-maker, eldest son of prominent director Eric Khoo, must have gotten the knack of making movies from his father, seeing that Late Shift, one of his first short films, gained a standing ovation at the Busan film awards, clear evidence of the film-maker’s ability to touch its audience.
Starring David Chua as the male
lead and local TV actress Ezanne Lee in a cameo role, there is no central plot
in this piece; from the beginning whereby our male lead, a taxi-driver doing a
late night shift picks up a tipsy customer who sings an out-of-tune Mandarin
love song which is carried along the entire film, till its end where he
reminisces about happier times with a lady, presumably his wife. Along the late
shift, the taxi-driver has several customers; among them, a lovey-dovey young
couple, an irritated national-service man on the phone, a Chinese lady who is
distraught for an unknown reason, and a wailing Indian woman whose husband has
just met with an accident. The passengers are from various backgrounds and they
all experience very different moods within the cab, all of which is taken in by
our silent male lead who doesn't seem to care at all; his seemingly
mundane night-shift probably just a means to sustenance.
The short is
held in place with impressive cinematography (seeing that most of it was shot
in the night under artificial lighting) and it strikes a chord with any
audience member who has taken a taxi in Singapore before, in which that one
realizes that the driver ferrying you to your destination, could possibly be
concurrently observing and passing his own judgement about you as the
passenger throughout the journey. Slightly creepy in that sense, Late Shift
is unpretentious and realistic in its portrayal of an elderly driver in his
personal pains of aging without his partner, and
the melancholic scene of him smoking stoically cannot help but
tug on the audience’ heart strings, lingering on in one’s mind like the taste
of stale tobacco as the old man drives on into the lonesome night.
Review by Gwen K
Here is the trailer of Late Shift
Review by Gwen K
Here is the trailer of Late Shift