MY MAGIC

Singapore, 2008, 75 minutes, Colour.
Bosco Francis.
Directed by Eric Khoo.

A modest 75 minute film for Cannes to acknowledge the small but active industry in Singapore.

The film opens with a large man in a bar continually asking for another drink. We glimpse a small boy forlorn in a shopping mall. Soon we learn that they are father and son, the son, an intelligent boy, has to care for his alcoholic father.

Because the father was once a magician who specialised in fakir-like magic in enduring piercings, beatings and broken glass, he gets an opportunity to make money for his son by enduring more and more tests of pain for a paying Chinese audience. (The magician and his son are both Tamil and speak Tamil.) The proprietor is interested in acts that ‘make the audience squirm’ – which is more than a bit the same for us as the cinema audience watching.

The boy longs for his departed mother. Finally, the father tells his son the truth about what happened and there is a pleasing fantasy touch to end the film.

Brief but telling, with a sense of humanity and a glimpse of Singapore.

1.The brevity of the film, modesty, small budget?

2.Local film-making, the glimpses of Singapore: homes, clubs, the mall, apartment blocks, the streets? The musical score?

3.The Tamil characters, language? The Chinese audiences in the film?

4.The credits, Francis and his asking for more drinks, his anger, beating the bartender, chewing the glass, the glimpse of the boy, lonely at the mall? His phone call to his wife? Asking her to come back? Going home, sick, collapsing? The boy cleaning up? The set-up of the relation between father and son?

5.Father and son, the boy angry at his father’s drinking, the father’s work, cleaning the bar, drinking off the remainders, helping the prostitute in the kitchen, her later gratitude? The boy and his homework, doing others’ homework and being paid, at home, the tests, wanting a better job, commenting on his father? The boys attacking him and his fending them off by doing magic tricks?

6.The manager, the boss and his watching Francis? The proposal, the better money, the bargaining for the percentage, the various acts: fire, glass, the shards, the beating? The audience reaction? The razors and the string? Wanting to make audiences squirm?

7.The boss, his proposal, the long endurance, the money, the manager taking the money, Francis’s collapse?

8.The boy, talking to his grandmother, longing for his mother? Thinking it was his fault that she left? His father phoning, the phone cut off?

9.The magic, the boy being fascinated by his father’s tricks, learning?

10.The aftermath of the endurance performance, the money, their leaving Singapore, going to the old house, the father telling the story about meeting his mother, the performance, the mother tricked into carrying drugs? Her being hanged? The photos in the box? The boy’s delight in seeing the relics of his mother?

11.The appearance of the younger couple, their bowing, the curtain closing? The father’s death, the boy closing his eyes? The boy and his future?

12.An affecting film, humane?