“4:30“ by Royston Tan now on DVD

Finally available on all-region DVD: The second feature by Singapore’s famed auteur Royston Tan, “4:30”, is nothing short of a minimalist masterpiece.

With its brilliant cinematography, complemented by the lead actor Xiao Li Yuan’s stunning performance as 11-year-old latchkey child Xiao Wu, this film easily elevates each of its pointedly choreographed camera moves to the level of becoming breathtaking action in themselves.

The plot comes reduced to an almost negligible quantity: the boy, Xiao Wu, desolate flotsam to Singapore’s “streaming” society, and apparently stranded awash on some time-shore equally bypassed or stretched to such an infinity as grows from abandonment and ensuing oblivion, over a period of a mere four days grows ever more intrigued by his 30+ tenant Jung, on whom he develops a habit of spying at 4:30 each morning.
Him being Korean, lovesick Jung that is, there passes no verbal communication between the two of them, just mute interaction, distance and shared solitude of the heart-rending kind. Here it is silence itself turned into drama.
When in the end the last wavelet of compassion recedes, it is not just little Xiao Wu shedding some tears for this cruel departure - while gazing, no: tentatively rather than hopefully beaming into the dark big-city night void...
I can't think of a feeling heart unmoved by this pristine, awesome film!

Short of words it is indeed. But what it does give instead, is a handsomely visualized display of a heart’s fill of half swallowed emotions and helpless gestures. To me, that is all the language I need in a film.

Deeply moving – or, to put it best in the words DeLillo would have used: “gradually shattering”, that’s what it is! For me personally, “4:30” has come to hold special meaning when it instantly, irreversibly claimed its place as the one film most dear to me.
Which is why I want to urgently recommend it to you: check the newly established moviexclusive estore here to order your copy of "4:30" now. It works particularly well for any international buyer, regarding shipping conditions and paypal transaction. For additional information on where to get your copy simply click here.
Don't waste no time considering!

(pic©Zhao Wei Films)