15 (2003)

Royston Tan's 15 is a glorious mess, capturing the emotional breadth and intensity of teen life with a laudable immediacy. Tan uses non-professional actors -- actual teens from housing project gangs -- and captures the anarchy of their existence in the shadows of a tightly regimented society. His filmmaking technique encompasses sentimental angst, documentary realism (as when Tan nauseatingly lingers on Shaun Tan attempting to ingest a condom filled with Ecstasy, or calmly sticking a pin through his friend's cheek), video-game graphics, music videos, and a sardonic nihilism that manifests itself in two of the more outrageous segments of the film, both related to Armani's (Melvin Lee) plan to commit suicide. In the first, a variety of possible techniques are outlined in grotesquely animated form, in the crude manner of South Park. The second segment documents Shaun and Erick's (Erick Chun) efforts to find Armani the perfect site for his suicide leap, cutting from location to location with the boys holding scorecards and Armani voicing his disdainful appraisal of each one. But the sardonic humor of this segment is tempered by the genuine pain expressed in the shot that follows: a single long take of Armani sitting on a train, silently crying. Tan tries to cover a lot of ground in the film and runs the emotional gamut. Even at 93 minutes, it would get a bit weary without the high-energy musical numbers he tosses in. More importantly, however, the director merges technique and subject matter with such skill, that even when it's clumsy or amateurish, the film has a startlingly unmediated quality. One almost gets the sense that Tan is merely the vehicle through which these lost, forgotten boys are telling their own story. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide