Shuttle Life

An impoverished family attempts to cope with tragedy and mental illness in a very divided society, in Malaysian director Tan Seng Kiat's feature debut. There isn't much Qiang (Jack Tan) can do to make life better for his mentally unstable mother (Sylvia Chang) and five-year-old sister Hui Shan. He can steal spare parts and sell them at the repair shop. He can roam the big city on his motorcycle, in search of water to bring back home to fuel his mother's obsessive need to wash clothes. He loves his family, dysfunctional as it is, and has a special bond with his little sister, but a sense of impending danger — vividly conveyed by Tan's assured mise en scène — is Qiang's daily companion, as if tragedy could strike any minute. And on the night of his sister's sixth birthday, it does.