‘We Are All Strangers’ Review: Anthony Chen’s Lovely Singapore Story

After two features set far from home — respectively Drift in Greece and The Breaking Ice in China — Anthony Chen returns to Singapore with the minor-key magical We Are All Strangers (Wo Men Bu Shi Mo Sheng Ren). As flavorful and satisfying as the Hokkien noodles seen being stir-fried, seasoned and served with a cold beer at various intervals, the film is a hypnotic conclusion to what the writer-director calls his Growing Up trilogy — preceded by the poignant domestic drama Ilo Ilo and the melancholic intergenerational romance Wet Season.

What these movies have in common is their fresco-like attention to the ebb and flow, the minute details, the disappointments and rewards of ordinary lives and imperfect families, both biological and chosen.

Shot with unflashy elegance (this time by Teoh Gay Hian) and imbued with a strong sense of place, they are intimate stories told against the expansive backdrop of a bustling city stratified with unspoken class divisions, a widening wealth divide and friction between accelerated urban transformation and eroding tradition. Most of all, these chamber pieces share emotional resonance achieved with a minimum of sentimentality.

Slapping Cat Stevens’ heart-melter “Father and Son” on the end credits might be an obvious choice in a film that sees those roles evolve — pulling apart, intersecting and ultimately merging. But it makes sense here as an organic extension of the depth of feeling Chen evokes in his four-character portrait.

The movie owes a debt to the late Taiwanese pointillist Edward Yang, whose exploration of family — especially in his masterpiece Yi Yi — forged a model of sprawling character-based storytelling that remains unsurpassed.

There are distinct echoes here of the struggles, the conflicts and comforts that Yang conveyed with lucidity and compassion, contextualizing his observation of individuals in the social fabric and physical environments of the city where they live.

One shot in Chen’s movie, of a wedding celebration replete with clusters of pink balloons and a prominent Double Happiness neon, seems a direct homage to Yi Yi. Chen also takes his cue from Yang with a leisurely running time of more than two-and-a-half hours, an investment generously repaid. (That’s nothing, however, next to the four-hour span of Yang’s other instant classic, A Brighter Summer Day.)

Uncomplaining hard-worker Boon Kiat (Andi Lim) runs a cheap and cheerful streetside Hokkein noodle stall. Having no head for business, he hasn’t raised his prices in 10 years, despite the cost of everything in Singapore constantly climbing. His lazy 21-year-old son Junyang (Koh Jia Ler) is about to finish compulsory military service and has given little thought to what comes next. He just knows he wants to make an easier and more lucrative living than his dad.

Junyang’s chief interest is his high school sweetheart Lydia (Regene Lim), who comes from a far more well-heeled family, with a haughty mother who insists on speaking only English and seems disdainful of her daughter’s boyfriend. Lydia is preparing to take her college-entrance A Levels in addition to an upcoming piano recital exam.

An unforeseen development with Junyang sidelines those plans and drastically changes their future together, accelerating their path to adulthood and responsibility.

Meanwhile, gentle-natured Boon Kiat shyly takes a liking to Bee Hwa (Yeo Yann Yann), one of the hostesses pushing beer on customers at tables outside the stall. She’s brassy, tough and has zero tolerance for co-workers moving in on her customers. A Malaysian looking to stay in Singapore rather than do the cross-causeway commute, Bee Hwa is older than her colleagues, which gets her the affectionate designation of “beer auntie.”

At first, she feigns indifference to Boon Kiat’s attentions when he starts insisting that she get off her feet and eat something or when he takes her out on his idea of an affordable date — an air-conditioned public bus ride across the city. But faint traces of a smile on Bee Hwa’s face suggest she’s at least flattered. She roars with laughter when he asks her to marry him, but she doesn’t say no.

The writer-director’s observation of this oddly matched courtship is one of the movie’s sweetest pleasures. Boon Kiat is unsophisticated but always solicitous of her needs and Bee Hwa allows glimpses of the growing fondness beneath her brittle wise-ass manner. Witnessing the gradual changes in her character, in her behavior toward Boon Kiat and her role as a big sister to Junyang and Lydia is enchanting.

Before long, the two couples are living together in a modest public housing apartment, with an extra member of the family when Junyang and Lydia become parents. Junyang’s immaturity makes things difficult for the younger couple, stoking Lydia’s regret over giving up her studies.

Her husband takes a stab at gainful employment with a food delivery service but quits because the wealthier class of Singaporean customers prove fussy and prone to complaining. Junyang is convinced he’s found a sure thing job that will yield high commissions when a slick real estate developer takes him on with almost zero training to sell luxury waterfront condos.

Tragedy rears its head with a medical diagnosis, Junyang’s adventures in real estate crash and burn, Boon Kiat’s lousy head for business brings threats from loan sharks and an ill-planned get-rich-quick scheme leads to legal trouble. But not before it hilariously reveals Bee Hwa as a TikTok natural and a gifted salesperson. Yeo is just marvelous.

There’s a beautiful lilting rhythm to the story’s developments as the centrality of each of the four principal characters keeps shifting, often showing unsuspected sides of them. All four actors are captivating, especially Koh, who was discovered by the director at age 11 while casting Ilo Ilo; and the divine Yeo, who played his mother in the same film. Both actors appear in all three parts of Chen’s trilogy.

Koh makes Junyang almost reprehensibly naïve, but crucially, more stupid than sure of himself. Even when his boss insists that he take a cooler name to impress foreign buyers and he chooses Steve (“like Steve Jobs”), his ambition is less that of a cocky operator than a kid with a pipe dream. That means he never becomes unsympathetic. When humbling missteps force him to scale down those big dreams, what might look from the outside like resignation or defeat instead plays more like a new level-headedness, making him stronger, not weaker.

That echoes a rare offering of fatherly advice from a gorgeous scene earlier in the film, when Boon Kiat tells Junyang that lofty dreams can be a trap and it’s better to be grounded, suggesting that “too much happiness, not enough suffering” unbalances a life.

Lim has the most muted role, becoming not at all the person she possibly imagined back before she married Junyang, when they were swimming in a luxury hotel rooftop infinity pool with a “vanishing edge” design that makes it seem like the city skyline is at their fingertips. Lydia often appears to wonder if she knows this boy who rerouted her life at all. But her sadness never curdles. She’s receptive to a surprise gesture of love from Junyang and sets about improving her situation without compromising her role as a mother and wife.

The real surprise though is Lim, a former surfer and longtime television actor in his first feature role, played with restraint but ample warmth, kindness and an endearing hint of embarrassment about his unworldliness. A scene in which Boon Kiat insists on following Bee Hwa, wobbling drunkenly on her heels, all the way home to make sure she’s safe is gold. Even when faced with crushing sadness, Boon Kiat’s disposition is one of calm acceptance, never losing his gratitude for the love of Bee Hwa.

We Are All Strangers, a title that to some degree applies to all of them in the beginning, even father and son, is a film in which nothing and everything happens. The movie now and then risks tipping into winsome cuteness, but Chen’s limpid naturalism helps sidestep potential clichés; its emotions are honest and earned.

The writer-director takes in the tiniest moments — that can turn a day around, change an outlook or redirect a life. More than that, he shows how even the most seemingly ill-suited of people can form a family, finding comfort and nourishment in it.