Lucky 7

(Singapore, 2008, 82 mins)

DigiBeta (PAL)

North American Premiere

PRODS: Sun Koh, Lim Tingli, Joanne Bartholomeusz
SCR: the Directors
CAM: Roszali Samad, Brian Gothong Tan, Sharon Loh, Jaye Neo, Cain Chui, Andrew Mark Sobrielo, Chris Yeo Siew Hua, Adrian Lo
EDS: Sun Ko, Boo Junfeng, Brian Gothing Tan, Chew Tze Chuan, Chris Yeo
MUS: Delakrus, Liang Wenfu, Darren Ng, Popland, Chew Tze Chuan, Shabir, Brian Gothong Tan
Cast: Sunny Pang, Ching Chong Hua, Justyn Lee, K Rajagopal, Robin Goh, Chermaine Ang, Ding Chu Hui

Dragons & Tigers Award Nominee.

Bane of the Singapore censors, Sun Koh is a naughty director. She invited six other Singaporean filmmakers to join her in a game of "exquisite corpse": a chain of episodes linked only by the presence of actor Sunny Pang which mysteriously adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Singapore’s film culture has been stymied from the start by interference from the "free" world’s most conservative paternalistic government; here, for the first time outside the work of Eric Khoo and Royston Tan, it suddenly looks lively and inventive. It’s not quite as random as the exquisite corpse game strictly requires, because directors worked on each other’s episodes, but you’ll forgive the odd contrivance because the overall result is so much fun.

Sunny Pang finds himself playing everything from a son stuck looking after a dying father to a participant in a bisexual orgy, from a factory-floor worker discussing the various roles he’s played in the film to a vagrant on a park bench. Despite the built-in discontinuities, the flow of everyday scenes and fantasies is quite persuasive; the game works as the surrealists intended it, sparking unforeseen implications and associations. The surrealists might also have enjoyed the eroticism.

-- Tony Rayns

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