Stranger Eyes (Drama)
Director: Yeo Siew Hua
Producer: Alex C. Lo,Stefano Centini,Jean-Laurent Csinidis,Fran Borgia
Screenwriter: Yeo Siew Hua
Cinematographer: Hideho Urata
Composer: Thomas Foguneen
Editor: Jean-Christophe Bouzy
Production Designer: James Page
Costume Designer: Meredith Lee
Key Cast: Anicca Panna,Lee Kang-sheng,Wu Chien-Ho
Lee Kang-sheng propels a slow-burn thriller – the first ever Singaporean film to compete for Venice’s Golden Lion – that blurs the lines between vigilance, voyeurism and the hunger to be watched.
Little Bo vanishes in broad daylight, leaving her father, Junyang, distraught. Back home, he and his wife Peiying receive a DVD containing a video of father and child, then another of the family, and then another. The police begin to suspect the shady Wu (Lee Kang-sheng) – a peeping Tom who lives in the apartment block opposite – of being responsible for not only the discs but also Bo’s disappearance. As the investigation unfolds, what untold truths about culpability, neglect and desire will be revealed by the ever-cascading wealth of footage?
Spliced together by Jean-Christophe Bouzy (Titane, MIFF 2021), the latest film from Golden Leopard winner Yeo Siew Hua is an accomplished feat of editing, at once dizzying and gripping as it observes its characters through CCTV, livestreams, social media and smartphone videos. As its title suggests, Stranger Eyes captures how seeing can both distance and distort, while Lee’s hefty performance channels the absorbing unknowability he’s perfected in his myriad roles for Tsai Ming-liang (Days, MIFF 2021; Stray Dogs, MIFF 2014). Evoking Hidden (MIFF 2005) and One Hour Photo (MIFF 2002), Yeo’s film stands apart for its perspective on a screen- and surveillance-obsessed world – a harrowing yet deeply human masterwork from which we simply can’t look away.
“What begins as a crime thriller ends as a transfixing meditation on our personal need for recognition … Yeo succeeds at crafting an original vision.” – IndieWire