The film is a profusion of dazzling and dizzy color and costume, draped around a story about the Papaya Sisters, two friends trying to win the national getai competition. As if it were an antidote to contemporary torment, Tan took on a bit of cultural candy, getai, the gaudy Malaysian musical style in 881 (2007). His follow-up film, the mildly muted 4:30 (2005), again approached urban angst, this time through the eyes of an eleven-year-old trapped in the isolation of a dreary high-rise. The following year, Tan made his annoyance clear with the Bollywood-like barb, Cut, a caustic tribute to censorship.
Tan's unblinking outlook was new to the island republic and the Singapore Board of Film Censors responded with equal ferocity, requesting dozens of cuts, even objecting to the use of Hokkien, a Chinese dialect scorned by the government. With the feature-length version of 15 (2003)-a raw and forbidden look at disaffected punks and their nihilistic exploits-Tan's films seemed numbered. At the just-legal age of twenty-one, he began issuing forth a torrent of provocative short films, such as Sons (2000), 48 on AIDS (2002), Mother (2002), and 15 (2002), that inspired admiration from the critics and condemnation from the censors in his native Singapore. Royston Tan is a nuisance, a thorn in the side of the body politic.
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