Victim(s) (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Layla Zhuqing Ji
	Actors: Lu Huang, Remon Lim, Xianjun Fu, Wilson Hsu, Kahoe Hon
	Country: MAL
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 28.06.2020, FEFF2020, 14" screen.
Synopsis: When high-school student Gangzi (Hon) is killed and his two friends wounded, all suspicions turn to rich kid Chen (Fu) who can't be found.
Review: What starts as a murder mystery turns very quickly to a traumatizing bullying story. I have the feeling this topic is not much tackled in Western cinema, except to show a high-school student as the ultimate asshole. In Asia it is taken very seriously for the life-wrecking drama it can be, as I remember from the Animated Korean The King of Pigs, and shown by the presence of a second bullying movie, Better Days, closing this Far East Film Festival. On a side note, the director of this movie is Chinese (and the original language Mandarin) but she made it in Malaysia to escape censorship in her country. The movie is very good at turning progressively what looks obvious at the beginning (the murderer even confessed) into a much more ambiguous situation, once we see flashbacks of what happened at school. And I can warn you this is not your simple "give me your money" bullying, it goes well beyond to a point where it made me feel ill-at-ease watching the movie. But it cleverly stayed within the boundaries of what I could tolerate. So the whole backstory tells a lot about teenagers, how they treat each other and lie to look better, or not to become the bullied themselves. Bullying and prejudice is everywhere and against everything: money, race, sexual preferences... I sincerly hope this situation is an exaggeration of reality in most schools.  But the aftermath of the murder deals more with how people (adults and teens alike) stupidly react in the face of such situation, in particular by deciding who's fault it is before even a hint of due process. Journalists and random people quickly made up their mind without having knowledge of most of the facts. A behavior I would expect from the teens is in fact shown to be the same in adults. A movie hard to watch, but well-done and successful at delivering its message.
Rating: 7 /10