The Freedom of Accepting: a review of Little Creatures Big and Small

The five short films in Little Creatures Big and Small present a tenderly complex commentary on what it means to be a child in Singapore, and subsequently, what it means to become an adult in a tiny city-state that is constantly catching up with itself. They reveal and acknowledge the cruelties that now seem too much to have been borne by our small selves. The pressures and expectations projected onto us – our behaviours, abilities and choices – all before we have even begun to understand the world that circumscribes us. Ways in which we are marginalized or tormented when we do not fit neatly into the norms. Conversely,the films compel us to recalibrate the ways we have been taught to envision and approach big adulthood. The need to question and unlearn stifling schools of thought that we inherited from our parents and society as children.

When Small Selves Encounter Cruelties

First up, Isabelle Grace Monteiro’s Tails and Ong Yin Meng Taylor’s Mattress (Malay: Tilam) are realistic narrative films, fictional but steeped in a world that we can easily recognise as our own, one with strong undercurrents of cruelty, even towards small and innocent children. With a substantial running time of 19 and 25 minutes respectively, both films use linear storytelling to delve into the lives and immediate concerns of two extremely strong protagonists: Wei, a young schoolboy who is getting severely bullied in Monteiro’s film and Siti, a mother who is struggling to come to terms with her young son’s neurodivergence in Ong’s.

In Tails, Wei is getting bullied at school by a group of boys in his class. They pretend to befriend him, but in that same breath, mock and use him, knowing he is unlikely to fight back; he does in fact tolerate their harassment out of helplessness and perhaps in a bid to fit in. Even the opening scene is sufficient for the viewer to viscerally feel the cruelty. It begins innocently enough, with just the audio track of the boys’ giggles, before cutting to one of them playing with the crickets on the grass. As Wei’s bullies, huddled under the sun on their school field, hold up a magnifying glass to the camera’s eye, the viewer is forced into the position of the crickets, being burnt alive by concentrated sunlight pouring through the glass. An act the boys seem to carry out with morbid glee. Shortly after, one of the boys Shang tosses the burnt insects onto the school janitor’s dustpan and crushes them one last time under his shoe. A vindictive act that makes both the janitor, and the viewer recoil. This feeling of unease only worsens when the boys decide to toss and bat around snails at a park, remorselessly laughing at innards splattering, much to our collective horror.

In Mattress, the cruelty is deflected from the child and borne by his protective, and guilt-ridden mother. She reckons with old inherited ideas around what constitutes a ‘correct’ way of life for her son, and we bear witness as she undergoes the psychological hurdles that come with unlearning these ideas to create a better life for him. For a majority of the film, Siti struggles to come to terms with Aqil’s neurodivergence and what that might mean for his future, particularly because she is still attached to the idea of keeping him within a mainstream school. An idea that at its heart is very Singaporean, of desperately wanting our children to be ‘on par’ with everyone else and to not ‘fall behind’ with regard to their education, even if it means pushing our children into environments that are deeply unsuited for their disposition, for which the consequences could be devastating. Siti is further tormented by the constant passing remarks from strangers and family alike about Aqil and by implication, her method of parenting him. Early in the film, Siti and Aqil are waiting for the school bus. Aqil’s constant recitation of, the Al-Fatihah (the first chapter of the Qur’an) in English instead of Arabic or even Malay, catches the attention of a fellow parent who is quick to judge: “Youngsters nowadays…It is important for them to learn all of this. Especially our mother tongue. Don’t you agree?” The same criticism is brought up again in a later scene by Siti’s mother-in-law who comments that it is “so embarrassing” and asks “why other children can do it” unlike Aqil. While Aqil is only officially diagnosed with autism after both of the scenes, it does not excuse either commenter from their callousness. Are we, in this day and age, still that ill-informed about neurodivergence to not even consider it as a possibility? To not have that in the back of our minds, reminding us to hold our tongues, be careful with our words?  Sadly, it is only Siti who bears the weight of their ignorance, a weight that devolves into undue pressure, and this culminates in her eventual breakdown.

Another film in the series that delves into maternal guilt is the documentary short In Full Bloom by Michelle Choo. It follows Priscilla, a mother of two, as she raises her daughter Anneli and son Reuel within a ground-up community initiative rooted in nature. Alongside scenes such as Priscilla showing her children how to properly spread compost or teaching members of the public how to saw wood, is a voiceover narration where she reflects on her unconventional – by Singaporean standards – parenting approach. She explains that her guilt stems from not being able to “give [her] children the type of education…other parents did…like tuition, extra classes” as she “did not have the means” to do so. Here, the cruelty perhaps is more abstract, that we are born into a society that overvalues academics while willfully undervaluing, even forgoing the most immediate and organic education that nature can offer us, impoverishing ourselves along the way. That a mother as nourishing, adventurous and open-minded as Priscilla can still feel poorly about her brilliant choices. That there are children, unlike Anneli and Reuel, who never get to understand the world in the way Priscilla and her kids do. I am a case in point myself, having grown up as such a city girl that my first proper nature hike as a twenty-something overwhelmed me with emotion. At the highest point of the hike, under a sunlit canopy, surrounded by trees I wished I could name, I realised just how deprived I had been for so long, and how much I needed to connect with Mother Earth to feel grounded as a human being. Perhaps, that was why I felt so moved by Anneli and Reuel’s unconventional upbringing, because I sometimes wish it would be more conventional in Singapore for our children’s education to be rooted in the natural environment. Long after watching this short, two lovely images linger in my mind. The first is a cinematic shot of Reuel drenched and belly down in a large puddle on a rainy field; it is the most carefree I have seen a child be in this country. The second is of Anneli tenderly holding onto Duckie, one of the ducks in the farm that suddenly passes away, and refusing to bury him wrapped in newspaper as suggested by an adult volunteer because she knew “he like[d] the soil”; her tenderness is something many children lose on their way to become educated. Perhaps, this is what it means for children to be in full bloom.

When We Arrive at Acceptance

What ultimately sets Wei, Siti and Priscilla free is the difficult but necessary act of accepting their realities, which in turn empowers their choices, though this manifests differently in each of their fictional and real lives.

At the beginning of Tails, Wei finds a lizard in the school toilet that he keeps as a pet and names Giri. However, he secretly houses Giri in his personal locker, fearing that his bullies may hurt the lizard the same way they hurt other creatures. When the bullies taunt Wei by lying that Giri has gone missing, that it “confirm die already”, Wei has an outburst as he searches high and low for his pet. Luckily, it turns out that it is Willy the school janitor who has rescued Giri, because “[Wei’s] friends were up to no good”.  When Wei shares that the boys think he is “weird,” Willy shares some sagely advice: “All I know is that I’d rather be myself. Even if it means being my only friend”. It is the seeming audacity of self-acceptance, modelled by Willy, that empowers Wei to proudly share about Giri during a show-and-tell exercise in class. It also sets a fellow classmate free; he decides at the last minute to swap out his more typical sharing on his Pokémon collection for a giddy confession of his love for K-Pop.

Siti’s freedom is hard won after a tormented period of anxious denial. During the medical appointment where Aqil is officially diagnosed with autism, Siti realises that the recurring bed bug infestation in their mattress, hence the title, is due to Aqil secretly housing bed bugs in his favourite toy bus, not wanting his mother to hurt his friends. (On a sidenote, this scene made me imagine Wei, Anneli, Reuel and Aqil as good friends in a parallel universe.). Overwhelmed, Siti loses her temper at Aqil for the first time, causing him to break down. While Siti’s husband reminds her of how far their son has come, Siti cannot help but wonder if “all of this”, meaning Aqil’s autism, may have been caused by her. When her husband vehemently rejects that idea and insists, “All of this is just a test from Allah,” she tearfully replies, “Then test me, why test [our son].” Perhaps only after having had the time to process the diagnosis does Siti finally understand that her distress cannot be mitigated by anything external but only by her coming to terms with Aqil’s autism. Almost immediately, this acceptance liberates her, as if an oppressive veil was lifted from her body: the weight of resentment that can build from constant denial. She smiles for the first time in the film as she admires her son’s kindness and inherent intelligence, and sheds all anxiety about opening up about his diagnosis to others. It is in her own acceptance of their shared reality as a family that Siti is finally, and visibly, at peace.

For a documentary that begins with an honest confession of mum guilt, Priscilla’s absolution of herself seems to emerge through her children who enable her to recognise that she is indeed a good mother. During a trip to Mount Bromo, Anneli tells her fearful mother to hold her hand, adding, “That’s why I am here, mummy” as if she were the parent. In a later scene, Priscilla asks her children why they follow her to the farm, and without a beat, both admit that it is because they wish to “stay” or “go with mummy”. What I appreciated in this documentary was how the relationship between Priscilla and her children was not vertical, but horizontal, a testament to Priscilla’s own willingness to learn from her children. Likewise, the fact that they had the maturity and empathy to reassure or validate their mother at their tender ages made my heart ache in a good way.

Unlearning and Relearning Adulthood

One of the shorter films in the programme, Overgrown by Ema Tan is a surrealist narrative that follows an adult woman Angie who returns to her grandparents’ home that has gone on sale. In a whimsical soap-bubble-filled dream sequence, where mobile phones no longer work, she reunites with her younger self, Gigi. Together, the unlikely pair of small and big selves chat about life over childhood obsessions such as pickup sticks and sparklers. Throughout the film, Gigi asks questions a child would, such as “Do you have a boyfriend?” or “Are you rich?” Quickly, it becomes clear that the future Gigi dreams of is not quite the present Angie is living. Here, an invisible yet insurmountable valley between childhood dreams and adult reality emerges. Yet, the film never slips into fruitless nostalgia, where the adult is framed as or sees themselves as a failure for not living what they once imagined to be an ideal life. And this storytelling choice is a relief, given how Singaporean society often enforces the idea that we should have determined our futures even before we become young adults, and that to detour or divert is invariably to fail. When Gigi asks if Angie lives in a large house, for example, Angie replies simply that she lives in a small apartment but does not mind it. Towards the end, Gigi poignantly asks: “Where we live now, are we happy?”. When Angie says that she believes so, and that she is making the effort to love this version of her life, Gigi concurs and softly says: “Then maybe it’s ok.” Through Gigi’s acceptance of Angie’s life, the film comforts the viewer too, suggesting that a life that is different from our younger fantasies or hopes is not at all an inferior one. These dreams sustain us through a point in life but are not the be-all-end-all. To thus leave those dreams ‘unfulfilled’, so to speak, does not mean our lives likewise are unfulfilled: we have simply outgrown them and recalibrated what it means to be an adult along the way.

tofu house films’ Mina Choo and Anne Hung’s 0128 BOWL-0-RAMA is an experimental two-minute animation that pays unique homage to Shrub, an indie retail store selling a curated assortment of creative works such as zines and art at #01-28, a reinvented locksmith store (once run by the owners’ grandparents) on the first floor of Golden Mile Tower. Arguably, this comic short is the most disconnected from the four films in the selection, given that it does not have a traditional storyline with key themes and is undeniably the most abstract. But through the motif of the gutterball, echoing Shrub’s art exhibition titled Gutter Lounge, it immortalises the store, and its eclectic offerings. Irreverent in aesthetic and tone, the film speaks to our inner child by presenting an eccentric visual story that is far removed from the often unavoidable seriousness of adult life. We follow the character of a mouse-shaped bowling ball that falls into the lane’s gutter, thus becoming a gutterball. The ball speeds through a dizzying psychedelic rollercoaster till it lands at a digital rendering of Shrub. There, it reunites with other striking characters such as a walking key and a colourful housefly as they relax within the store and peruse its offerings, with no palpable pressure to return to the bowling alley above. In context, the short seems to speak to Shrub as a refuge for homegrown artists; to find a place that is willing to showcase your creativity is after all a gift, and not the easiest to come by, especially in a country that does not always support the arts. But on the theme of acceptance, perhaps becoming our big selves means acknowledging and leaning into the wonder and imagination we possessed as our small selves, instead of succumbing to the societal pressure of discarding these qualities as something we must necessarily outgrow. We often assume or are even taught that once we become adults, that part of ourselves is lost for good. But it could be recovered, if we were intentional about it. That intentionality – the willingness to accept that our small selves continue to live within our big adult selves and deserve to be attended to and nourished – after all is what continues to birth artists in a city that is adamant about hyper-productivity, mistakes monetary value for inherent worth and operates on constant renewal that begets constant erasure. Only then might we even think to immortalise a place we love (and may someday lose to the city) in such a creative way, just as this film does.

About the Writer

Prasanthi Ram is a writer, editor and lecturer. Her debut short story cycle Nine Yard Sarees (2023) won the Singapore Literature Prize (SLP) for English Fiction in 2024. Her writing can be found in Best Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Five (2022) and Making Kin: Ecofeminist Essays from Singapore (2021) among others. She co-founded and is the prose editor of Mahogany Journal.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Asian Film Archive.