Becoming Royston is a short film feature turned full length movie, which was directed by a newcomer director from Singapore, Nicholas Chee.
As explained in the synopsis, Becoming Royston is about a young man named Tan Boon Huat (played by newcomer Alvin Neo) who dislikes studying. When he could no longer tolerate the constant beating and scolding from his prawn farmer father, he runs away from home and seeks help from his good friend, a boatman, to bring him to Singapore.
The boatman gave him a V8 Camera (a camera which was use to shot short films on 8mm prints) and both went to Singapore. In Singapore, the boatman let Boon Huat stayed and worked in a home video rental stall owned by the boatman's friend.
At the same time, we were introduced to Ah Girl (Oon Shu An), a girl who runs away from home and works in a salon and grocery store. She frequents the video store and steals VHS from the store, which later develops into a romance with Boon Huat.
While working in the video store, Boon Huat found some identity card left by customers and it contains an ID of Royston Tan, the acclaimed Singapore director behind 15 and 4.30. Thus, without an ID with himself while running away from his family, Boon Huat took Royston's ID and pretends to be Royston. From a simple casual remark to the boatman on becoming a movie director, Boon Huat went on his way to write a script, hoping to become a director himself, and also, becoming Royston himself.
Becoming Royston is not your typical commercial box office production, neither it is an foreign art-house fare that you see in an art-house cinema. More rather, it was a movie that was made for oneself, or something that one wants to do it truly for themselves. Nicholas Chee, with the background of Visual Communications from School of Design, Temasek Polytechnic Singapore, has previously directed commercials and advertisements for products from famous brands. Now, for being a director for a full length feature movie for the first time, Becoming Royston has a long way to go if it want to become a commercial success. If it want to be considered as a art-house fare, the movie is more passable as a final year project for a film school student. But for being an independent production catering to targeted audience, it has made it.
With a mere 82 minutes runtime for a full length feature, Becoming Royston did not fully explained every single detail that was left behind. There are scenes which leaves audience to wonder what has happened, where it somehow leaves some nasty aftertaste to the audience. However, the movie did left the audience with a big space to imagine the fate of Boon Huat and his family, which can be explained by the final scene after the end credits.
Becoming Royston might have rooms for improvement, but it did give some spaces for audience who wants a break from the bombardment of box office hits and trashes.
