Shanty is a woman living at the fringe of society, always a day late and a dollar short -- literally. She has a daughter in the country, and she sends money for the child's support, and phones her weekly, but she hasn't seen her in three years; all she has is a photograph. When she moves into the apartment above Kay Tong Lim's photography shop -- he doesn't want a tenant, but she forces her way in and pays him half now and promises to pay the rest later, and can you make a copy of this picture of my daughter -- I had to force myself to continue to watch this. This, I thought, was going to be a couple of character studies about two people people I didn't think I would care much for, and how they bond. Because we're all people, you know? We all need other people. Blah, Blah, Blah.

Well, I never really came to care about either of them, but somehow the process of the movie, the inevitable plot became this mystery. You know how your standard mystery is to figure out who done it, but occasionally, like in episodes of COLUMBO, you're told all that up front: who did the murder, how he did the murder, and the detective knows very well who did it. The only question is how they're going to prove it, what the process will be.

That process was the interesting point in this movie. Of course, that journey from start to finish is supposed to be interesting, but it almost invariably goes in one of a severely limited number of ways. This one does not. Well done.