If you haven't yet watched Tiong Bahru Social Club, then I urge you to watch it. It is that rarest of things, a Singaporean film in English.
A summary of the plot would might sound trite. The protagonist is Ah Bee, an Everyman character in a near-future or alternate Singapore (played by Thomas Pang who flashes a beatific smile at the camera at regular intervals). He gets a new job on his 30th birthday, as a Happiness Agent at the Tiong Bahru Social Club.
TBSC is a combination housing estate and community designed to raise property values and happiness, using AI and big data. It's nowhere near as ominous as that sounds, but the longer Ah Bee spends there, the more he comes to realise that his ideas of happiness may not be so easily quantified. His assigned resident, Ms Wee, is almost gleefully rebellious (you can tell Jalyn Han is having fun with the role) but manages to impart some important wisdom. Ah Bee also has other experiences and adventures, and comes in contact with other, differently interesting residents and staff of TBSC. In the end, Ah Bee has to make up his own mind, and figure out what he wants - and whether or not he'll find it at TBSC.
The film has a lovingly retro-futurist feel, full of soft pastel hues that take the edge off the absurdist fable being played out. There is a deliberately slow pace to the narrative, which may test viewers who are used to faster-paced Hollywood movies. The visual spectacle helps, and might lull the unsuspecting to dismiss this as more simplistic than it actually is.
As a satire, TBSC isn't particularly biting. It's far more gentle and thoughtful. Akin to the way one's tongue keeps straying back to that niggling thread of tendon stuck in a back tooth after a good meal, the film manages to probe gently at some uniquely Singaporean obsessions, and address some more universal concerns.
Life, love, happiness and the efficacy of complaints are common enough themes that anyone will get, but those familiar with the texture of Singapore society will be able to detect quite a bit more. Like the titular social club, incisive viewers will find this a more pointed and thought-provoking critique.
