Karaoke

"A young man returns from college to his home village in Malaysia, expecting to take over his mother's karaoke bar; but the village has changed, and everything he thinks he knows is wrong. To start, we eavesdrop on snatches of conversation in a crowded karaoke bar. The customers are Malays and Indians; we are in a Malaysian village which has been transformed (destroyed?) by massive new plantations of palm trees, producing oil for cosmetics. Gradually our attention focuses on Betik, a young man just back from college in Kuala Lumpur; his mother, widowed not long ago, owns and runs the bar and he expects to take it over in due course. At first things go well for Betik: his interest in a local girl seems to be reciprocated, and he gets...