In City of Small Blessings, an urbane, respected retiree spirals towards folly and infamy as he fights against an eviction order from unsympathetic bureaucrats. It is based on Singaporean parliamentarian-author Simon Tay’s much-debated 2009 novel about his compatriots’ confrontations with historical traumas, social changes and inter-generational chasms. Rich in its observations and immense in its scope, the book is a hard one to crack – so credit goes to filmmaker Chen-hsi Wong for trying.
Having brought her project to Torino Film Lab, Cannes l’Atelier and Venice’s Production Bridge during its long gestation period, following her first long feature, Innocents, in 2012, Wong returns with an adaptation focused almost solely on her unravelling protagonist. There are definitely merits to this narrative edit, as it makes the film more universal in its themes and more palatable to international audiences with less knowledge about Singapore’s social idiosyncrasies.
But it’s exactly these idiosyncrasies that makes the city-state unique, as they provide fertile ground for the social satires, dystopic genre flicks and suppressed melodramas which propelled Singaporean cinema to festival success and global recognition. While there are hints in City of Small Blessings’ first half hour about a tussle between the little man and the state machine, or a confrontation between the old and the new, Wong eventually settles on a story about a self-entitled, increasingly irritable man’s ever more delusional acts to save face, resist change and deny responsibility for his own role in his downfall.
As the film begins, Prakash (Victor Banerjee) is a civil, mild-mannered 70-year-old revered among the social and political élite for his past service as the headmaster of Singapore’s top-ranked high school and then as director-general of the education ministry. When not spending downtime with his wife Anna (Noorlinah Mohamed) in their large and airy bungalow with its finely manicured gardens, Prakash attends prestigious social functions, meets old friends at golf clubs and hotel cafes.
We get to see this perfect embodiment of the benign bureaucrat when he peppers his acceptance speech of an honorary award with mentions of “stakeholders” and praise for development in Singapore. But Prakash is soon served a dose of his own medicine when he is informed that he and his wife have been living as trespassers in their rented home, as the house has already been acquired by the government, and its location is ear-marked for the construction of a new subway line. Meetings with transport apparatchiks only yield blank faces and scornful retorts.
Prakash’s veneer as a righteous warrior gradually slips. It turns out he has known about the eviction order for months, and has been putting the issue off. The painful backstory revolves around how the comparatively well-off couple ended up not owning their home, even in old age. His claim that the authorities made mistakes in their zoning plans are soon revealed to be bogus. Initially hesitating to ask for help from a former student who is a high-ranking environmental official, Prakash soon descends into a petition-writing frenzy in which he resorts to name-calling, rank-pulling and emotional blackmailing for his own interest.
Working with Japanese DP Hideho Urata (Plan 75, Stranger Eyes) and production designer James Page, Wong provides excellent imagery to accompany her revelations of Prakash’s messed-up real self. In a row with Anna, he bursts into a cramped room filled with storage boxes – a chaos that is markedly different from the tidy and neat spaces outside, and a sign of the man’s habit of filing problems away from view. From then on, the house’s appearance on screen shifts: in tilting or wider shots, we see rickety roofs and worn pillars.
Spliced together by the editing trio of Lee Chatametikool, Harin Paesongthai and Ivy Chin, the imagery provides much-needed relief in a story driven by the maddening moves of a very unsympathetic protagonist. Banerjee delivers a powerful turn as he swivels between his character’s fluctuating emotions and morality, and Noorlinah Mohamed matches them with a performance that is less a long-suffering wife than a companion daring the protagonist to face the devil in himself. The same goes for Brendon Fernandez as the couple’s son Neel, who is forced to return from his home in Los Angeles to help his mother and battle his long-estranged father.
Director: Chen-hsi Wong
Screenwriter: Chen-hsi Wong, adapted from a novel by Simon Tay
Producers: Fran Borgia, Gary Goh, Teh Su Ching, Chen-his Won
Executive producers: Melvin Ang, Ng Say Yong
Cast: Victor Banerjee, Noorlinah Mohamed, Brendon Fernandez, Toh Kia Hing, Timonthy Nga
Cinematography: Hideho Urata
Editing: Lee Chatametikool, Harin Paesongthai, Ivy Chin
Production design: James Page
Music: Teo Wei Yong
Production companies: Akanga Film Asia, mm2 Entertainment, Purple Tree Pictures, Analog Robot
Venue: Singapore International Film Festival (Asian Feature Competition)
In English
118 minutes
