Little White Lies magazine

Eleven-year-old Xiao Wu rises in his squalid Singapore apartment at 4:30 every morning. He creeps out of bed, sometimes to watch old films he’s seen a thousand times, but mostly to creep into the bedroom of his tenant/uncle Jung. Jung is a wordless, suicidal thirtysomething who, through the bizarre – and not entirely healthy – attention of the younger boy, will come to a tentative acceptance of life. Royston Tan’s film comes alive in the green hued semi-darkness of the flat, using long takes and infinite silences to show two troubled souls connecting through their mutual loneliness. It’s difficult but affecting stuff.