SINdie continues with its weekly regular reviews of selected short films from Viddsee, an online platform for filmmakers and watchers of Southeast Asian Films.
Arthur is a security guard who is literally pushed to the
brink of life by supposedly financial woes. The film opens with a tight shot of
his shoes on the edge of a building with the blurry background of the passing
traffic below, immediately establishing the portrait of a troubled soul. Through
the further exposition of his boss’ bullying, we are conditioned to expect a
tale of class struggle and victimization. But its turns not to be one.
This short film, as enigmatic as its title ‘Cake’, takes a
genre turn before we get comfortable.
Arthur receives a phone call from a stranger speaking in a cold American-accented
monotone asking him to switch off the security camera system for 10 minutes in
exchange for a sum of money. The effect of this seems at once mystifying and
even incredulous – an unexplainable American presence in a remote industrial
part of Singapore. But at the same time, it also seems like a fan-boy
transplant of Hollywood into an otherwise modestly-scaled film. And does director
Benjamin Low manage to pull off a ‘Hollywood in the middle of Tuas’ thriller?
It seems so.
At the very core, Benjamin gets a good grip of the moral
dilemma that underpins the character, positioning Arthur a flawed protagonist
who is walking the tightrope between seeking sustenance and greed, and
vacillating between conformity and retaliation. Though starkly fictional in its
plot, the scenes depicted are as local as they can get, drawing us closer to
the situation and characters. Nick, the sidekick, provides an effective
counterpoint to Arthur’s thoughts and action. Finally, the film manages to
raise your adrenalin with its evenly-paced build-up and dashes of surprises.
And the director does not forget to end with a bang, literally and an actual
pay-off to the film’s title.
This film is not without its flaws though. Arthur speaks in
a crisp, articulate, news-reader-like English. Cinematography is unimaginative
and the boss is a bit of a caricature. Even the classic piano tune overlay at
the beginning of the film seemed a little pseudo-arthouse. But get past these and you will realise the film gets the hang of a thriller genre pretty well.
Review by Jeremy Sing
Watch the full short film here on Viddsee
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About Viddsee
Viddsee is an online video platform for filmmakers and audience of Southeast Asian short films. Built and designed by engineers and filmmakers, Viddsee enables users to easily discover, watch and share stories from Southeast Asia on their desktop and mobile devices. Our vision is to continually grow the community of short film audiences to enable a wide and accessible market reach for short films and become the leading micro-cinema platform for Asia.
