THE STORY – At an authoritarian all-girls school, four misfit teens form a secret gang. Their fumbling rebellion unearths buried desires and the quiet violence of growing up in contemporary Singapore.
THE CAST – Ranice Tay, Nicole Lee, Lim Shi-An, Genevieve Tan & Jack Kao
THE TEAM – Siyou Tan (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 109 Minutes
In Singapore, a society that’s so strict that it’s illegal to toss your chewing gum on the sidewalk, following the rules is a way of life. Yet there, as in most societies, there are rebels within who just can’t stay within the boundaries that societies have imposed on them. They may be political activists, religious figures, or even workers at the highest levels of government. However, in “Amoeba,” writer/director Siyou Tan captures that spirit of rebellion in the unlikeliest of places — an elite all-girls Chinese school.
When we first meet 16-year-old Xin Yu Choo (Ranice Tay), she is noisily dragging a desk down the hallway of her new school. Arriving at her new homeroom, Choo swaggers into the room with such confidence that it sends a signal to the teacher and her compliant students that “This girl is trouble.” But to three girls huddled in the back of the classroom, the expressions on their faces read “This girl is fabulous.”
That trio soon becomes a quartet as Choo is taken under the wing of tomboy Gina Wong (Genevieve Tan), rich girl Sofia Tay (Shi-An Lim) and new bestie Vanessa Ooi (Nicole Lee), whose skill with a camcorder gives the girls the tool to document their rebellion against a school where “excellence, duty, and honor” (at least in their motto) is everything. Their pranks are the kind that you might expect from any girls their age: a little smoking, a little drinking, a little sabotaging of the school play, and creating their new codes of conduct in their own secret cave.
Fostering their spirit of rebellion is the girls’ love of gangsta rap, and the four cosplay all around the school, causing more unease among the authorities. Sofia soon introduces the girls to her family’s personal driver, Phoon (Jack Kao), who had a background in a gang when he was younger. Seeing them interact with one another, Phoon jokingly suggests that they form a “girl gang.” After all, he argues, that’s where they can put the school’s principles of “excellence, duty, and honor” in the real world. The girls agree, and a new gang is born.
For Tan, Singapore and its many cultural facets are laced throughout and almost become their own character in the film. Key among those is the country’s respect for the spirit world, which includes an unspoken belief in ghosts and in mythical creatures. She incorporates that belief into the narrative, as Choo feels the presence of a ghost in her bedroom and enlists Vanessa to use her camcorder in an attempt to capture it. As an unseen presence that needs handling, the ghost also serves as a metaphor for those things unspoken, which dovetails into Choo and Vanessa drawing closer at a time when they bothare still exploring their sexuality.
In addition, the camcorder also serves two important functions — first as a mode of expression that allows the girls to talk all about their “gang” and curse out the teachers they don’t like, and second as evidence when that incriminating footage gets into the hands of the school authorities, providing them all that they need to shut down the student rebellion.
In one sense, “Amoeba” follows a long line of films — from “American Graffiti” to “Lady Bird” — that capture the time when students are about to leave the comfort of their friends in school and move on, either to higher education or to the real world. Usually, that big break from school life is dramatized around one single event— the prom, for example, or the big game — but Tan, reflecting the strictness of Singapore society, centers on another consequential moment: the final exam to determine who will be moving up in Singapore society. The topic of the test is the myths of Singapore (of course), and Tan expertly milks the suspense as to who will pass for all its worth. Have the members of the girl gang be changed by their experience and rebel, or will they fall back to conform to what Singaporean society expects of them?
There’s an appealing looseness to Tan’s filmmaking style, directing her camera to capture her characters behaving just as girls their age are expected to act. In fact, the scenes with the girls just enjoying each other’s company are among the film’s most delightful. Yet the sheer number of them keeps the film from having the kind of strong narrative through-line that it needs to sustain audience interest. The comparatively lower stakes for the final exam need to be heightened by building anticipation for its outcome, but the many girl-bonding scenes can at times get in the way of providing that much-needed narrative drive.
Still, despite the film’s flaws, Tan’s approach to the material, much of it taken from her own experience, offers a fresh perspective on the role of young women in a strict society and how rebellion against those norms can lead to a richer and happier life. The fact that in “Amoeba,” her debut feature, Tan is able to offer a critique of Singaporean society disguised as a girls’ school revolt with such skill and sophistication offers enormous promise for even better films to come.
