Bugis Street

Before the ultimate nanny state tidied away all signs of 'dirt', Bugis Street was Singapore's centre for transvestite hookers. This movie, by a Hong Kong fashion photographer turned director, is a fey evocation of those days, centred on the imaginary Sin-Sin Hotel, crammed to the rafters with she-males and their drunken sailor pick-ups. There's no plot; the film explores its world through the eyes of the newly arrived maid (Le, from Oliver Stone's Heaven & Earth), an innocent who winds up learning all she'll ever need to know about eye-liner, falsies, penises and putting a brave face on things. Better as censor-bait than as drama, but it contains several powerful direct-to-camera monologues by real life drag queens.