Bugis Street (film)

Bugis Street is a 1995 Hong KongSingapore coproduction directed by Yonfan, about the lives of Singaporean transvestites in a bygone era. It was a minor hit at the box office with a sexuallyexplicit RA Restricted Artistic rating, male fullfrontal nudity and its nostalgic evocation of a seedy but colourful aspect of Singaporean culture, prior to the redevelopment of Bugis Street into a modern shopping district and the eradication of transvestite activities in the area.

Sixteenyearold Lien, portrayed by Vietnamese actress Hiep Thi Le, is the main protagonist. Despite her having worked for a time as a servant in a household whose young master adored her in her hometown of Malacca, West Malaysia, the young lass comes across as having led a surprisingly sheltered life. She journeys to Singapore to seek employment as a maid in the Sin Sin Hotel along Bugis Street.She seems thoroughly content for a time to possess a nave, romanticised view of the rambunctious goingson at the hotel where she witnesses the sad departure of an American gentleman from the homecumworkplace of his Chinese girl. The guest is actually a presentlysober but angry American sailor who has belatedly discovered that the Singaporean Chinese prostitute he picked up in Bugis Street and spent a drunken night with happens to be a transwoman. Before long, the new employee Lien finds out that many of the longterm lodgers of the budget establishment, whose room rental rate is S3, whether it be for an hour or the entire day and night, are women who were born with male bodies. Although her first reaction to seeing someone with breasts and a penis is one of vomitinducing revulsion which causes her to contemplate fleeing the neighbourhood, she ends up not giving in to her impulses. ........

Source: Wikipedia