The happiest neighbourhood in the world might just be right at our doorstep … or is it? Filmmaker Tan Bee Thiam offers a satirical take on the Singaporean construct of happiness in his solo directorial debut
Happiness can mean different things to different people. For Tan Bee Thiam, it is doing what you love: “Work fulfilment is happiness to me, as well as being around my loved ones.”
But what if happiness becomes a competition? The filmmaker questions the construct of happiness in Singapore—and the country’s obsession with quantifiable results, whether it is the GDP or the happiness index—in his first full-length feature, Tiong Bahru Social Club, which is the opening film of the 31st Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), which takes place from November 26 to December 6 in a hybrid format. Written by Tan and Antti Toivonen, the satirical comedy tells the story of Ah Bee, who takes on the job of a happiness agent in a data-driven programme as per the film’s title to build the happiest neighbourhood in the world, within the idyllic Tiong Bahru district.
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Interestingly, Toivonen is from Finland, which was declared the happiest country in the world for the third year running in the 2020 edition of the annual United Nations World Happiness Report. Singapore takes the 31st spot. “While we are not very happy, Singapore is the most competitive country in the world. The film is a hybrid of both the Finnish and Singaporean sensibilities, but the idea of happiness as a competition is, of course, absurd because then it becomes ironic,” enthuses Tan.
So even though Ah Bee diligently carries out his tasks at the Tiong Bahru Social Club, from taking care of an elderly resident and her cat to leading group happiness exercises, there is a risk of him losing his job should the “gross community happiness index”, which addresses all aspect of happiness through an artificial intelligence algorithm, fall below par—and thus revealing the fractures of enforced happiness.
AN ODE TO HOME
“The film reflects my feelings towards Singapore. It is a film about home and about being together—and I think people can definitely relate to that and find meaning, especially at the end of such a crazy year, which is so Black Mirror,” Tan explains, in reference to the popular Netflix sci-fi anthology series of a dystopian future. He lets on that even though he has been involved in the various aspects of filmmaking for about 10 years now, “I really wanted to make a film for my mother, something that she can watch and understand”.
Both Tan and Toivonen also took inspiration from the distinct art deco identity of the Tiong Bahru district and the iconic brutalist architecture of the Pearl Bank Apartments building. While the Singapore-based creative agency head Toivonen currently resides in Tiong Bahru (“He knows more about the neighbourhood that I do,” Tan quips.), Tan spent many of his weekends growing up at his grandmother’s Kim Tian Road residence, just off Tiong Bahru. On his journey there from his family home in Clementi, he would often pass by the Pearl Bank Apartments.
“The design and aesthetic of the future is very much an essential aspect that we focused our research on while making the film, because it was in this very aesthetic that inspired us to look at what the past generation thought about the future. Tiong Bahru Social Club is not a film about nostalgia, it is actually about the futuristic visions that people, especially those in the 1970s, already had while thinking about what people in 2020 would do. This is a kind of retrofuturism,” Tan elucidates.
