Perth as “Singapore’s
answer to Taxi Driver,” and its
artwork — complete with a yellow cab and its cigarette smoking, blank-faced
proprietor looming in the foreground — further induces feelings of queasy
disconnection with society at large. It’s a comparative swing for the fences,
naturally, and thus a bit of an over-sell. A better leaping off point of comparison, however, might well be 1997’s
Korean import Audition, which spent a
lot of time working in the murky interstices of discontented personal lives
before taking a headlong plunge into shocking violence and torture.

Directed by the singularly monikered Djinn — a gambit that’s
worked out OK thus far for McG, but considerably less well for Tarsem — Perth centers on Harry Lee (Lim Kay
Tong), a Singaporean part-time security guard and taxi driver who wants nothing
more to do with the fast-paced, status-driven society that’s left him a step behind,
socio-economically speaking. Harry’s wife (Liu Qiulian) is cheating on him, and
his dependence on the bottle is leaving him less and less satisfied. His dream,
randomly enough, is to move to the titular Western Australian coast town, but
his attempts to migrate are complicated when he hooks up with some gangster
types and takes on a job ferrying prostitutes about town. The situation becomes
increasingly unstable when he takes an interest in one of the girls in
particular, Vietnamese Mai (Ivy Cheng). This reawakens in Harry a certain amount
of long-missing tenderness, but will his dark and dangerous attempts at
personal redemption pay off or merely bloodily pull down more of those around
him?

Djinn composes his film in woozy, saturated fashion, and with
a heavy reliance on close-ups, but he still packs his frames with telling
detail, and occasionally utilizes quick inserts of domestic objects to convey a
grounded sense of setting. He also deftly deploys a small company of vivid
supporting characters — misogynistic and racist fellow cabbies, quietly
colorful local thugs — who give the movie a well-rounded vibe, along with its
cannily mixed Cantonese, Mandarin, English and local dialects. The film goes a
long, long way toward establishing Harry as a reprehensible character before attempting
to redeem him, and it’s a credit to Tong’s fine performance that we remain
engaged if not totally sympathetic. In this way, Perth also
reminded me a bit of Battle of Heaven
in its focus on wounded souls, though that film ends on a note of violence a
lot closer to Perth’s
midway point.

Perth
is presented in a solid if saturated anamorphic widescreen transfer, with so-so
Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and DTS surround sound audio tracks. (Djinn’s
reliance on source audio and lack of foleyed effects mars a handful of scenes.)
Djinn also sits for a somewhat tinnily recorded audio commentary track in which
he cites influences as diverse as Lee Tamahori’s Once
Were Warriors (which I can see) and Don
Quixote (which I have more trouble visualizing); more engaging is the
erudite Tong, who also sits for his own solo commentary track. Doling out
production anecdotes (the production photographer is drafted to play a random character
who’s dog Harry steals) alongside thoughts on Harry’s quiet inner rage, the
thoughtful and avuncular Tong serves up as pleasant an aural guide as could be
imagined for a film as grim as Perth. He also contributes his thoughts to
six minutes of deleted scenes. An 11-minute set design featurette on art
director Andy Heng’s work rounds things out, along with the movie’s original
theatrical trailer and previews for other Tartan releases. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)