Bugis Street

Running time: N/A

Lian is a sheltered sixteen-year-old Malaysian girl who is suddenly thrust out of her comfortable existence as a rich family's maid and forced to work in a strange hotel near Singapore's Bugis Street. It is there, in this place of dizzying confusion, that she must come to terms with the real world and all its conflicting opposites. Naive beyond belief, Lian is at first shocked when she discovers that the hotel is populated not only by prostitutes, but that these "ladies of the evening" are in reality, men. But her disbelief in and her aversion to this weird and twisted place cannot make it go away. Gradually, through her various contacts with the residents and patrons of the hotel, she begins to realize that nothing in the real world is as it seems and that change and chaos are the only constants on which one can rely. In true mythical tradition, Lian is soon befriended by a strange but wise visitor from Paris, who takes her under his/her wing and kindly imparts to the young girl the knowledge she will need to survive her journey. Along the way Lian encounters powerful monsters and other strange creatures, both real and imagined, and slowly undergoes the painful process of girl-to-woman transformation. Love, anger, sadness, and confusion spin her like a top as new and often uncomfortable surprises greet her at every turn. Yet with each experience she moves closer to the understanding that, like the transvestites and transsexuals of the hotel, she too must accept the unexpected changes that life throws her way. For all its outlandish characters and gender-bending, Bugis Street is nothing less than a classic coming-of-age tale given a brightly original perspective. Hiep Thi Lo (Heaven and Earth) is perfect as Lian and so is the rest of the cast from the Sin Sin Hotel who infuse their roles with a colorful, wild abandon, shaded with dignity and grace. --P.D. Crane