Stranger Eyes (Mò shì lù)

 

Writer/director Yeo Siew Hua

director on the set with Lee Kang-sheng

STRANGER EYES (Mò shì lù)                     B                                                              Singapore  Taiwan  France  USA  (126 mi)  2024  d: Yeo Siew Hua

You just have to watch someone close enough and keep your eyes on him.  At some point, even if he’s not a criminal, he will turn into one.                                                                                  —Officer Zheng (Pete Teo)

If you love peering through windows, then this is a film for you, using Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW (1954) scenario, but embellishing it in the modern age, becoming a moody, atmospheric psychological thriller that starts out as a conventional missing-child narrative to become a cerebral meditation on voyeurism, privacy, and digital surveillance in modern Singapore, emphasizing a theme that there is always someone watching.  Featuring legendary Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng, who broke onto the scene in Tsai Ming-liang’s Rebels of the Neon God (Qing shao nian nuo zha) (1992), but was last seen in Days (Rizi) (2020), where the strength of his near-silent career in acting is in body language and in the power of his gaze, bringing an enigmatic quality and depth through silence, making him uniquely qualified to play a silent voyeur, typically viewed as the most interesting character precisely because he says the least.  Yet he actually speaks here, but just barely, bringing a rare interest to the film, as he’s literally grown up before our eyes in his screen roles, connecting him to a certain style of minimalist arthouse films, kind of an Asian version of French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud who did exactly the same during the 60’s and 70’s, both happening to meet onscreen in Tsai’s WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? (2001).  Referencing other surveillance thrillers like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) or Michael Haneke's Caché (Hidden) (2005), the abduction of an infant child is a gripping starting point for a mystery that explores societal isolation and loneliness as much as any police procedural investigation, where we might think Lee Kang-sheng is inhabiting the Peter Lorre role in Fritz Lang’s M (1931), but this unravels in multi-layered complexities that reveal themselves in surveillance footage.  After China, Singapore is the third most surveilled city in the world (Surveillance, 'Big Brother' government made Singapore ...), where the government also has access to the emails, telephone calls, and internet search histories of all its citizens, which might sound a bit spooky, but Singapore is also renowned for being one of the strictest and safest countries in the world, with zero tolerance for both violent and petty crimes, where its legal system relies on severe penalties, widespread surveillance, and swift enforcement to maintain one of the lowest crime rates globally.  This is the world that Singapore director Yeo Siew Hua, who curiously resides in Buenos Aires, chooses to explore, examining multiple secret lives among a group of interconnected characters, using a mostly Taiwanese cast, with extensive CCTV surveillance coverage becoming a central focus, shot by cinematographer Hideho Urata who beautifully captures the sterility of the screen.   

The first draft of this film dates back to 2012, but the filmmaker was unable to secure financing, shelving the project until he could return to it at a later date, recalling episode six of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Decalogue (Dekalog) (1988-89), which was later expanded to A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE (1988), where the discourse surrounding surveillance has changed drastically over time.  Living in a densely populated area, it is now commonplace for neighbors in high rise buildings to be peering into the windows of other neighbors, becoming familiar with their schedules and routines, all part of a normal day, while at the same time the numerous government surveillance cameras are watching them as well, so they’re all part of a vicious circle.  At the heart of the film is a young couple, Junyang (Wu Jian-Ho) and his wife Peiying (Anicca Panna), along with his mother (Vera Chen), who grow distraught when their infant daughter disappears from a public playground right in front of the father’s distracted eyes, which only grows more mysterious when strange DVD video recordings of the family’s daily activities, both before and after the kidnapping, start appearing at their doorstep, including months-old surveillance footage from a visit to the supermarket, Stranger Eyes new clip official - Venice Film Festival 2024 - ½ YouTube (1:51).  The film makes smart use of the song “Endless Love” by Tsai Chin from the Shaw Brothers movie LOVE WITHOUT END (1961), one of the foundational classics in Chinese cinema, Tsai Chin/Cai Qin-Endless Love/Love Without End/Bu Liao ... YouTube (3:19), initially heard in romanticized supermarket surveillance footage, repeating later in the picture with devastating results.  Reporting the crime to the police, Officer Zheng (Pete Teo) is a calm counterbalance, trusting established police procedures, exuding patience and calm, immediately installing a camera outside their door to capture whoever’s leaving these recordings, which leads them to a suspicious middle-aged neighbor living in an adjacent tower, Lao Wu (Lee Kang-sheng), who they begin following with an obsessive curiosity.  The protagonists and antagonists often exchange roles, like mirror images of one another, which begins a strange journey to uncover the truth, growing more and more layered and complex, as Wu’s identity is more complicated than it seems, where it’s often difficult to find one’s bearings in this unraveling web of differing intentions from each character.  This pattern only grows more ominous, trying the patience of viewers who are searching for relevant clues, as nothing jumps out at you, but becomes part of a long series of watching footage, sometimes at home, sometimes in the presence of the police, where the original score written by Thomas Foguenne only adds to the intrigue, offering a percussive Tindersticks-style (with a gamelan) undercurrent of restless contemplation. 

Ambiguous to the core, perhaps the biggest surprise is not a whodunit revelation, but the makings of a fractured marriage, where the strains of a kidnapped child and the endless hours of watched footage, revealing things they definitely would have preferred to remain hidden, where it’s not long before deeper secrets from their personal lives emerge and the foundation of their relationship completely disintegrates.  We follow Junyang’s strange, stalker-ish behavior, especially as he follows Wu, Stranger Eyes new clip official - Venice Film Festival 2024 - 2/2 YouTube (1:11), observed by his wife Peiying offering her own commentary, seemingly having her own connection to the stalker, yet we’re not initially sure who she’s speaking about, and how it is connected, which only adds to the mystery.  Each character seems to harbor their own secrets, with Wu developing a voyeuristic fixation on cameras and his own surveillance videos, while he spends just as much time simply watching and observing others, perhaps because he has no life of his own, so he lives vicariously through the lives of others.  Junyang mirrors his unorthodox behavior by following the parents of the children who were in the park on the day of the kidnapping, seeing how close he can come to abducting their children, desperately trying to enter the psychological mindset of the perpetrator, as in this way maybe he can better understand exactly what happened.  We also learn that Wu had started chatting shamelessly with Peiying long before the child disappeared, as she has a public persona she adopts as a live-streaming DJ.  By shifting the focus away from the police, however, and into the tangled lives of the affected family, we also get an understanding of what the kidnapper might have been thinking, like why they were targeted in the first place, as we hear the repeated phrase, “Some people aren’t meant to be parents.”  Rather than find answers, there are lengthy scenes that ruminate on each respective character’s existential loneliness, suggesting with newfound technology, we are all drifting apart into social isolation.   What’s unique about the film is the slow pace and how abstract concepts replace any standard narrative, with a meandering storyline with shifting perspectives and viewpoints, where viewers often wonder why a certain character is being watched or studied, but the filmmaker has his own agenda about shifting the tone of the movie from the mother’s manic desperation to a more contemplative examination of the interiority of the characters.  The father is shown to be frequently distracted, unfaithful, and even reckless in his parenting duties before the incident, but the later scenes show a transformed man, aware of his shortcomings and how it may have led to unintended consequences, where the act of watching others is fundamentally linked to self-discovery, ending on a surprisingly tender and more reflective note, which may be the biggest reveal in the entire film.  The missing child scenario is simply a framework to examine how modern society, technology, and constant surveillance alienate us from human connection, while highlighting themes of forgiveness and redemption.    

What Marielle Knows (Was Marielle weiß)

 

Director Frédéric Hambalek

actress Laeni Geiseler

WHAT MARIELLE KNOWS (Was Marielle weiß)             B-                                       Germany  (86 mi)  2025  d: Frédéric Hambalek

The premise behind the film is a good one, using the gift of telekinetic powers to expose just how much of our carefully calculated self-image depends upon a foundation of lies, questioning just what happens when that protective illusion suddenly collapses, balancing perception with self-deception, but the execution leaves something to be desired, never rising to a level of excitement, where you can’t help but think another filmmaker would have been more risqué and brought so much more out of this, with the ending feeling like something of a letdown.  Better films on telekinetic powers would be Brian De Palma’s The Fury (1978) or Joachim Trier’s 2017 Top Ten List #4 Thelma, yet this film relies upon the very ordinariness of it, becoming all too banal and downright disinteresting, falling short of its possibilities, which is very hard to do, as the subject itself is so fascinating.  Described by BFI Sight and Sound (Eight under-the-radar LFF films | Sight and Sound) as “The most uproarious German comedy since 2017 Top Ten List #2 Toni Erdmann (2016),” but nothing could be further from the truth.  Despite some absurdities, and an over-the-top chamber score from Beethoven and Schubert string quartets that only heighten the hysteria, the film is a flat-out exposé on middle class hypocrisy, from a family that on the surface of things has everything, where seemingly open-minded parents pretend to be educated and honest, but the reality is something altogether different, which is confusing enough for a 12-year old child just entering puberty, on the verge of forming her own identity, especially after she mysteriously develops telekinetic powers and is able to see and hear everything her parents do and say.  Initially refusing to believe her, suspecting she’s somehow spying on them, yet her recall is so accurate and precise that it’s hard not to believe, completely altering their behavior, forced into hiding all their hidden secrets, turning their lives upside down, pretending nothing is out of the ordinary as the parents feebly struggle to put on a fake front, knowing they are always under observation and every word is being listened to, but the result couldn’t be more inexcusably pathetic, as there’s little left of their bourgeois ideals, ineptly becoming exactly the kind of people they never wanted to be.  A family drama passing as a surveillance story, exposing deeply hidden insecurities and a marriage founded on lies and deception, but the real tragedy is the story is told almost entirely from the parents’ point of view, with a focus on how they deal with this new revelation, and the poor girl gets left behind to fend for herself, with no support system in place, as she is never actually taken seriously, instead believing she is playing some kind of sick joke.  The film is surprisingly inert, more of an existential dilemma, their lives suddenly on hold, as if waiting to figure out how to deal with this strange phenomena, but that time never comes, as they’re simply not equipped to tell the truth the whole time, as everyone has precious secrets that no one else sees, somehow delving into the uncomfortable realms of Ruben Östlund in Force Majeure (Turist) (2014). 

Premiering at the Berlin Film Festival, it sounds like an edgy subject matter, but the director never finds the key to unlocking the film’s precious secrets, failing to utilize a bolder aesthetic, feeling more like something conventionally made for television.  Described as a comedy, it’s not really, though there are a few comedic moments, mostly it’s a mammoth tragedy, as the girl is so completely isolated and left all alone, where even her parents doubt her and are not what you’d call helpful, as they double down on their own egotistic superiority, unable to really engage with their daughter, instead they view her with suspicion and distrust, quickly dragging her to a doctor, with no results, only fanning the flames of family dysfunction.  As the film is well acted, ultimately the problem is with the writing, as the lives of the parents are suddenly exposed and openly transparent, confused that their everyday lives are completely disrupted, always on watch, but little is known about the girl, who remains a mystery, mostly kept out of sight, and is never seen at school, knowing next to nothing about her life, playing a youthful heroine who never laughs, while avoiding the idea of becoming a coming-of-age film.  That’s a problem, as she’s clearly the most intriguing character, where your heart goes out to her, as her easily perplexed parents haven’t a clue how to help or support her, instead they’re all about covering their own tracks.  What this says about constructing our own sense of identity is revealing, suggesting our view of ourselves is lined with lies and inaccuracies, offering a buffer to the hard realities we often choose to ignore.  Marielle (Laeni Geiseler, reminiscent of the eerie children in the films of Michael Haneke) has an unexplained gift that comes out of nowhere, suddenly her everyday reality after a brief spat results in her best friend slapping her in the face, suddenly discovering she is telepathic, yet she never abuses this gift, which feels more like a curse to her, as the adult world of her parents is suddenly exposed, her mother Julia (Julia Jentsch, from Hermine Huntgeburth’s EFFI BRIEST, 2009) and her father Tobias (Felix Kramer), as their immediate reaction is to self-servingly protect themselves rather than help understand or lovingly comfort her.  That leaves her trying to fend for herself in an adult world that is beyond her comprehension, filled with cover ups and despicable behavior that she never knew existed, completely dumbfounded that her parents are less than forthcoming with her.  What happens when suddenly your privacy is removed?  When the most unpleasant secrets of Julia and Tobias are embarrassingly revealed, they embark on a manipulative game that increasingly leads to more absurd situations, evoking unexpected consequences, where their comfortable middle class lives are not what they appear to be, making you question their seemingly harmonious family life.  Unfortunately, Hambalek’s film doesn’t stand up to Fassbinder’s more savagely brutal yet elegantly stylish family exposé Chinese Roulette (Chinesisches Roulette) (1976), or Roman Polanski’s emotionally devastating chamber drama, Carnage (2011), but does recall the 60’s horror sci-fi classic VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960), or those deceptively uncomfortable human conversations trying to outwit the technologically superior but malfunctioning computer Hal in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).   

A satire of bourgeois family life with all its secrets and lies, it starts, appropriately enough, with Julia having a healthy flirtation, engaging in verbal sex fantasies during a smoking break before entering into a scandalous affair with one of her married coworkers, Max (Mehmet Ateşçi), while at the same time Tobias is humiliated at his job designing book covers for a publishing house, where his planned cover design for a new novel is ridiculed and scorned as pretentious by his colleagues, particularly his younger competitor Sören (Moritz Treuenfels), who completely undermines his authority, leaving him struggling to regain his composure, having difficulties being recognized as the group leader.  In both of their minds, they have done nothing wrong and simply embellished the truth, rationalizing every little aspect of their own behavior while advocating for a version of themselves that is significantly better than who they really are.  But for Marielle, she sees things a little differently, suddenly seeing through the built-in defense mechanisms of her parent’s private and protected lives, yet when she asks them about it, they quickly deny any wrongdoing, instead reiterating meaningless platitudes that conceals what actually happened, continually presenting themselves in the best possible light, causing confusion in her young life, knowing her parents are lying, but she doesn’t know what to make of it, only adding to the confusion of her young life.  By repeating to them what she actually hears, reciting conversations verbatim, they are immediately shocked into altering their behavior, as if they are continuously on camera, with someone always watching them and seeing them in real time.  This shift in parental behavior exposes their own hypocrisies, but their initial reaction is to protect themselves, suddenly speaking French to avoid detection, never giving a thought about how this is affecting their young and impressionable daughter, whose life is spinning out of control, as what she’s been led to believe is exposed as a sham, where her parents are not who and what she was led to believe, suddenly much more fallible.  Finding herself in the precarious position of being the adult in the room, the only one speaking openly and honestly, literally hiding nothing, while her parents seem to be leading double lives, the ones they are actually living, and a fabricated version they want her to believe.  The film ends up being somewhat middle-of-the-road and inoffensive, matching the conventional mindset of the father, where much of this feels like characters walking on eggshells, as if there are potentially explosive landmines everywhere they step, accentuating all the things we say that we would not want others to hear.  The choice to focus on the more unimaginative and far less interesting parents leaves Marielle out of sight for most of the picture, mirroring what the mostly befuddled parents are experiencing, but this decision lessens the dramatic impact, feeling overly predictable, where it’s less about the supernatural ability itself and more about its impact on the family, but this leaves out of the picture the one character who is far and away the most interesting person in the room.