part of my 2012 MUBI World Cup coverage
An incredibly odd, charming and funny film. Words that wouldn't necessarily come to mind when thinking of a film about child kidnapping. A young boy who dreams of escaping his uneventful school-based life ends up having to do just that when he gets kidnapped. The interactions between the boy and his kidnappers reveal, especially by the end, that the whole time the boy, even while being kidnapped, was better off than his kidnappers. The satire doesn't end there, continuing onto the failures of the schooling system and its ridiculous testing principles, as well as the ineptitude and constant failure of the police. It's also interesting that the only real villain in the film, the original kidnapper and pedophile, was an ex-cop and someone's boss (exploiter). The film also didn't shy away from surreal aspects: the grandmother spouting anything from incomprehensible sayings to sudden revelations, the song and caricature world that the film morphs into:
the tropical fish mysteriously found after a flood to the most obvious, massive tropical fish at the end:
Something else that comes off as surreal is the normality that kidnapping is treated with. Something that had to happen for Ah-Jiang to get the preparation and 'reality-call' that he needed; for the family to come together, etc. Something else worth noting was the ending. The film ended very ambiguously. We don't learn if the boy passed his exam, the outcome of the kidnappers. We are left to wonder, does it even matter? It seems that Ah-Jiang has learned more through his experience than he would ever from studying for the test or his trials and tribulations afterwards.
Some more screenshots:
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