12 Storeys (1997)
Genre : Comedy, Drama
Runtime : 1H 45M
Director : Eric Khoo
Synopsis
The film depicts 24 hours in a HDB block of residential flats in Singapore. There are three main storylines. San San, fat, silent, and alone, hears the ghost of her mother constantly upbraid her. Ah Gu, a tofu soup vendor, is at odds with Lily, his materialistic immigrant wife, who longs for something he cannot provide. Meng spouts every moralistic bromide of the striving middle class, but is unhinged by his teenage sister May ("Trixie" to her boyfriend) who won't study, parties all night, and seems doomed by youth culture.
An American-born Chinese economics professor accompanies her boyfriend to Singapore for his best friend's wedding, only to get thrust into the lives of Asia's rich and famous.
Captain Barbossa, long believed to be dead, has come back to life and is headed to the edge of the Earth with Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. But nothing is quite as it seems.
After experiencing traumatic nightmares of a time now past, the Sorceress summons Prince Adam and Cringer to Castle Grayskull to give Adam a precious, jeweled sword and send the pair to the planet Etheria to investigate its secrets.
In Hong Kong of 1962, Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow, a journalist, move into neighbouring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their respective spouses creates an intimate bond between them.
After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
Masato is a young ramen chef in Japan. When he finds his late mother's journal after the sudden death of his emotionally distant father, he takes it with him to her native country, Singapore, hoping to piece together the story of his family and his life.
When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. Among the American prisoners is Cpl. King, a wheeler-dealer who has managed to establish a pretty good life for himself in the camp. King soon forms a friendship with an upper-class British officer who is fascinated with King's enthusiastic approach to life.
A group of English, American, Dutch and Australian women creates a vocal orchestra while being imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp on Sumatra during World War II.
During the late 1990s, a busy working-class Singaporean couple hires a Filipino woman as a maid and nanny to their young son.
This sensitive and sensual film draws together several narratives spanning several decades, all of them transpiring in the same room of the same Singaporean hotel — and all of them involving sex.
Two playboys try to forget previous romances in Singapore - until they meet Dorothy Lamour...
Wartime, 1942. Singapore. An Australian fighter pilot shot down in combat awakens suspended in the treetops. As night devours day, he must navigate through dangerous jungle in search of sanctuary.
American tattoo artist Jake Sawyer wanders the world, exploring and exploiting ethnic themes in his tattoo designs. At a tattoo expo in Singapore, he gets his first glimpse at the exotic world of traditional Samoan tattoo (tatau), and, in a thoughtless act, unwittingly unleashes a powerful angry spirit. In his devastating journey into Pacific mysticism, Jake must find a way to save his new love, Sina and recover his own soul.
Former bootlegger Remy Marco has a slight problem with forclosing bankers, a prospective son-in-law, and four hard-to-explain corpses.
Jack Flowers is an American hustler trying to make his fortune in 1970s Singapore in small time pimping. His dreams of building a fortune by running a brothel himself and returning to the States is materialized when he is offered the opportunity by the CIA to run a brothel for the R&R activities of U.S. soldiers on leave in Singapore.
After the war, Matt Gordon returns to Singapore to retrieve a fortune in smuggled pearls. Arrived, he reminisces in flashback about his prewar fiancée, alluring Linda, and her disappearance during the Japanese attack. But now Linda resurfaces...with amnesia and married to rich planter Van Leyden. Meanwhile, sinister fence Mauribus schemes to get Matt's pearls.
In Singapore, a private detective and the British authorities are on the trail of a crime syndicate that kidnaps a nuclear physicist with the aim of selling him to the highest bidder.
The core of the plot is the romantic triangle formed by the protagonist, a conscripted soldier named Private Brigg; a worldly professional soldier named Sergeant Driscoll, and Phillipa Raskin, the daughter of the Regimental Sergeant Major. The location is a British army base in Singapore during the Malayan Emergency.
While Joel and his older ship's captain brother Mark are at sea, the latter is abandoned in Singapore by devious ship's mate Finch who, upon their return, convinces the townspeople that Joel abandoned his brother. Joel, determined to not only find Mark but to see justice done, returns the ship to Singapore.
A series of intertwining tales involve "pleasure seekers and pleasure providers" during the course of one night in Geylang, Singapore's red-light district. There are three distinct stories, united only by the presence of characters from all the stories in a streetside eatery:
