FILM: 15 (18) Royston Tan i8888

Reviewed,Anthony Quinn
Friday 04 February 2005 01:02 GMT
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There's a drug-taking scene in this movie that might give even Pete Doherty the jitters. It's best left undescribed, as is much else of debutant Royston Tan's chronicle of debauched Singaporean youth. Spending their days truanting from school, these disaffected outcasts like nothing better than piercing their bodies, comparing their tattoos and getting off their heads on dope and heroin.

Tan occasionally breaks up the monotony with a gnomic slogan (World's Most Lethal Drug: DESPAIR) slung across the screen, though the catatonic camerawork ensures that the 90 minutes pass in purgatorial sluggishness.

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