In the Room

In the film's earliest scene, shot in shimmering black and white, two men - an Englishman and a local Singaporean - bid each other a poignant farewell on the eve of the Japanese invasion. Later, in a sequence saturated with colour, we meet a man on the eve of the surgery that will change him into a woman. And in one of In the Room's most bittersweet chapters, a single Singaporean man and a married Japanese woman enjoy a prolonged tryst; the man dreams of a future for them, but the woman knows that their entire love story is to be contained within these walls. Meanwhile, the ghost of a musician who perished in the room looks on quietly as one story dovetails into another. (Toronto International Film Festival)