Les étendues imaginaires

"A Land Imagined" may shatter the expectations of traditional film noir fans, much to their detriment. First, it's a courageous profile of Singapore's dismal human rights record in its treatment of fiscally-captive migrant workers by unscrupulous land reclamation firms. Secondly, it takes viewers deep into the surrealist existence of these unfortunates, one of whom has gone missing, the target of Lok (Peter Yu), a troubled but highly-competent insomniac cop. Don't expect a standard police procedural. This one's brilliantly unique.

The story belongs to the also-sleepless worker Wang Bi Cheng (Liu Xiaoyi) trapped in a nightmare world of heavy machinery, starvation pay and miserable worker dorms. Seeking relief, Wang discovers an all-night gaming parlor only to be pounced on by a fierce Internet troll.

Kudos to director Yeo Siew Hua for setting a compelling crime drama among the anonymous men wasting their lives in the service of brutal capitalism. It's a story rich in humanity, a passport to a real-world existence captured perhaps for the first time in cinema.