‘Stranger Eyes’ LFF 2024 Review: Somebody’s Watching
Stranger Eyes, directed by Yeo Siew Hua, was advertised as a mystery thriller by the London Film Festival brochure. The still attached to the blurb consists of hundreds of screens of footage arranged on a huge screen, with a man watching them intently. One would assume that this still depicted a dystopian future, with the combination of sterile lighting and the overwhelming presence of technology. However, the film’s exploration of surveillance revealed, to me, a world where the human experience is subject to, and ultimately the victim of, the predatory gaze of technology; bringing the perspective of a cold, unfeeling cinematic shot and evaluating it against human bias.
The film opens with a video of the main couple’s young child playing with her grandmother, the camera focuses on the little girl, Little Bo. The voices surrounding the girl seem detached; some disembodied, some emotionless. The atmosphere of the film shifts, and we discover that the reason we are watching this video is because the mother, Peiying, is searching for clues as to who may have kidnapped her young daughter. We watch the couple descend into unique forms of grief, with the father, Junyang, obsessing over someone else’s child while her mother is distracted. Meanwhile, Peiying exhibits complete listlessness and a profound lack of emotional response. The couple begins receiving unsettling CDs capturing them in compromising situations: intimate moments between the two, footage of Junyang involved in a threesome with another couple, and disturbing clips of his grieving obsession with a stranger’s child. Upon discovering their neighbour, Lao Wu, as the person planting the invasive CDs, the film shifts to Wu’s perspective of the couple. Peiying and Junyang, along with the audience, believe that Lao Wu kidnapped their child, and resort to extreme measures - manipulating, extorting, and threatening him into revealing her location, to no avail.
When Little Bo is returned to her family, it is because of passive policing; the police captain delivers this information to them with a long-suffering tone, lecturing the young couple on how the police do not have to go out on the streets to investigate crimes when one way or another, the criminals are captured on a camera. It is discovered that Lao Wu was not the perpetrator; instead, it was a woman grieving the loss of her own child. Police investigation, according to him, is a “waiting game”. While the mystery of Little Bo ends happily, the lives of the characters are forever changed by what they went through before getting their daughter back.
My screening was followed by a short Q&A with Yeo Siew Hua, and he described the portrayal of the characters in the film as intentionally leading the audience astray; by showing images of the characters in isolation from the narrative, it beckons the audience to fill in the gaps of what those images could mean. Ultimately, they mean nothing, but the audience has already created biases based on these images, shaping their perception for the rest of the film. Through Stranger Eyes, Yeo Siew Hua comments on life in Singapore, particularly the isolation and surveillance that permeates the social condition of the country.
These themes carry forth throughout the film; the use of cameras in workplaces, daily life, and public areas brings about an uneasy, confusing tone. With shifting perspectives between Peiying, Junyang, and Lao Wu, the narrative is woven into a discomfiting and shifty series of activities that are observed, filmed, and played back, leaving the audience to piece together explanations for what may be happening off-screen. Peiying’s job as a streamer, Junyang’s participation in live streams conducted by admirers at his workplace, and Lao Wu’s obsessive interest in the couple construct a camera-centric narrative, further complicated by the investigation being conducted by the Singapore police force into their missing child. Even when the filming ends, the watching does not; Junyang’s obsession with Wu, and the future that he represents, consumes him with questions. The film ends with optimism, as the audience watches Junyang and Peiying attempt reconciliation after the trauma that wrecked their home. However, the burden of knowledge rests on the viewer; we are complicit in the silencing of the couple’s indiscretions, and we can only watch as they try to rebuild trust, hope, and faith.
Stranger Eyes reflects the ever-present threat of watchfulness, as well as social isolation, through a voyeuristic narrative that is unforgiving to a single character in the film. We are not given the benefit of ignorance that the other characters have, yet, we curb our imaginations and continue to see the humanity of the characters. The final message of the film is confusing and unfinished, thus allowing the audience to build on the film and take it to unreachable heights in their minds. Delivered by incredible actors and a powerful core ideology, Stranger Eyes leaves everyone with something to reflect upon.
Edited by Humaira Valera, Co-Film & TV Editor
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