“The Need for Rites” is part of a compilation of 7 short films that Tan Chui Mui has written, directed and edited, and which she calls “All My Failed Attempts”. She shot one every month in 2008, while developing her second feature film, “Year Without a Summer”. All the films screener in Rotterdam under the aforementioned collective title.
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Lee Sook Chen, a girl dressed in black-and-white, is walking on the street checking on her phone and writing in her notebook at the same time. Suddenly, a man who claims to be a fortune teller from China bumps on her and insists on telling her fortune. She tells him the she is busy and that she has to meet someone, but he keeps spurring generalities about her past. Finally, and just before she enters the elevator in a building, she agrees to let him study her palm. Among the things he says, is that she cannot succeed in her homeland, and that she has to go abroad in order to do so. She also tells her that her relationship with her boyfriend will not last for long, with his words echoing more real to her as time passes. In the end, he asks for a donation and mentions a small ritual she eventually needs to perform.
Check the interview with the director
Tan Chui Mui directs a film about the most accurate swindler in the world, in a humorous fashion that, once more in one of her films, seems to be autobiographical, with the fortune teller’s comments resembling (what we know of) her life quite and career significantly. Finding the purpose of the short beyond the autobiographical is quite difficult, but perhaps one should take a look at the title to do so. In that regard, she seems to state why concepts like fortune telling still exist to this day: It is because people need them, they need someone to tell them what lies ahead, or essentially what to do with their lives.
At the same fashion, and considering the overall mentality of the fortune teller, one can only ask if these people actually believe in what they do or they are in it just to swindle people, with the particular man seeming to be a positive in both cases.
And talking about the fortune teller, Ho Kok Meng is excellent in the role, talking non-stop in his effort to “sell”, with his attitude, though, being more humorous than annoying, even if that element is definitely still there. Chua Tien See as Lee Sook Chen has a more passive role, with her growing realization that the fortune teller is on to something, being portrayed nicely.
DP James Lee shoots the film with an approach that could be described as documentary-like, with the shaky camera and the complete lack of any kind of exaltation pointing towards this path.
Although not on the same level as “Everyday Everyday” or “To Say Goodbye”, “The Need for Rites” is a competent short with Tan Chui Mui presenting a possible introspective narrative that blurs the lines between destiny and chance, while showcasing a very interesting comment about the concept of fortune telling.
