Genre:
Drama
Theatrical Release: 04/13/2005(USA
Release Date: 11/08/2005
SubTitles: English/Espanol/French
Dubbed: Mandarin
Sound: DD2/DD5.1
Run Time: 90 min
Distributor/Studio: Picture This
15, the debut feature from writer/director
Royston Tan, takes a loosely plotted look at the lives of some unruly teens in Singapore.
Melvin (
Melvin Chen) and
Vynn (
Vynn Soh) are best friends who spend a lot of their time cutting school and watching porn together.
Melvin is worried about passing his exams because his mother has threatened to throw him out if he fails.
Vynn still feels bitterness over the dissolution of his friendship with
Shaun (
Shaun Tan), who abandoned his former friends when he became more involved in gang life. The two boys also devote some time to working on a scandalous musical number to perform at a school assembly. The second half of the film focuses on
Shaun and his friend
Erick (
Erick Chun). First a former rival,
Armani (
Melvin Lee), helps them out when they're attacked by a gang of snotty, English-speaking schoolboys. In exchange, they devote a couple of days to helping the suicidal
Armani find a suitable building from which to jump.
Shaun and
Erick also engage in drug smuggling, and
Shaun helps
Erick pierce his cheek.
15 was based on an earlier short film by
Tan, who used the boys' own stories to help shape his narrative. The film created a lot of controversy in its native Singapore and inspired
Tan to make
Cut, a satirical short film celebrating censorship.
15 was shown at the
2004 New York Asian American International Film Festival.
~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Royston Tan's
15 is a glorious mess, capturing the emotional breadth and intensity of teen life with a laudable immediacy.
Tan uses non-professional actors -- actual teens from housing project gangs -- and captures the anarchy of their existence in the shadows of a tightly regimented society. His filmmaking technique encompasses sentimental angst,
documentary realism (as when
Tan nauseatingly lingers on
Shaun Tan attempting to ingest a condom filled with Ecstasy, or calmly sticking a pin through his friend's cheek), video-game graphics, music videos, and a sardonic nihilism that manifests itself in two of the more outrageous segments of the film, both related to
Armani's (
Melvin Lee) plan to commit suicide. In the first, a variety of possible techniques are outlined in grotesquely animated form, in the crude manner of
South Park. The second segment documents
Shaun and
Erick's (
Erick Chun) efforts to find
Armani the perfect site for his suicide leap, cutting from location to location with the boys holding scorecards and
Armani voicing his disdainful appraisal of each one. But the sardonic humor of this segment is tempered by the genuine pain expressed in the shot that follows: a single long take of
Armani sitting on a train, silently crying.
Tan tries to cover a lot of ground in the film and runs the emotional gamut. Even at 93 minutes, it would get a bit weary without the high-energy musical numbers he tosses in. More importantly, however, the director merges technique and subject matter with such skill, that even when it's clumsy or amateurish, the film has a startlingly unmediated quality. One almost gets the sense that
Tan is merely the vehicle through which these lost, forgotten boys are telling their own story.
~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
