881 . . . AWAS! this papaya shake has spoilers, don't read before watching the film!

I sat through Royston Tan's 881 waiting for one of the papaya sisters to die.

This death is an event that is breezily reported to the audience very soon after the opening of the film via a lighthearted, whimsical and short segment about the lives of the two young women before they met and became the Papaya Sisters.

That segment - the way it is filmed and I remember particularly the use of paper-cut-outs (not sure what the proper term is, but they're like paper dolls with clothes to mix and match, except 881 used cut-outs of Small Papaya's photographed parents - reminds me of the way the childhood of Amelie was narrated in that popular French film a few years back.

By telling the audience that one of the main characters will die at the age of 25 early on in the film, the narrative takes away the surprise of the later parts of the film where hints and scenes build up to full knowledge of the impending death.

Knowing that Small Papaya will eventually die from the outset means that there will be no climax from the moment that knowledge is uncovered as part of the plot development. Yet it would seem that knowing about her dying is critical to the climax of the film at the scenes where the Papaya Sisters have their ultimate battle of song and dance with the Durian Sisters.

Ya, I like the way the film plays tricks on the audience.

With gaudy costumes and choreography calling Mardi Gras to mind, the battle scene seems to invite the audience to drink in all the colours, to revel in the cheesiness of it all, to laugh at the extreme preparations that have been made by both sides.

And yet, underlying the glitter and the slapstick humour, there seems to be a serious face-off between life and death, between those with all the time in the world and those who have only a little time left, between the flashy spikiness of the funky technologically-powered future and the soft persuasion of the old-fashioned and the nostalgic's feathery caresses.

The other trick was in the characterisation of the ge-tai Xian Gu (Senior Fairy is my literal translation). At first she seems to be a stock character put in for laughs, like the prince of Ge-tai, played by the actual prince of ge-tai himself, Mr. Wang Lei.

But it turns out that there is more to her lofty seclusion (in a court complete with handmaidens) in a Chinese temple than the director's comic literal representation of her demi-goddess status in the world of ge-tai. She has magical powers and a pair of wings to demonstrate her immortality, and this is hilarious at first because it is a literal acting-out of the idea of someone who becomes a god (chen xian in Mandarin).

Xian Gu had retreated from a love triangle earlier on in her life, and so her cloistered existence takes on another layer of meaning in relation to her estranged relations with her twin sister, the seamstress who manages the Papaya Sisters. Her presence in the story proves to be for more than just laughs: she bears the burden of a secret love that is eventually uncovered.

Even immortals have unspeakable sorrows, so death, where is your sting? I guess this is why seeing Small Papaya on a sliver of moon as the film credits roll at the end becomes totally different from seeing the same image at the opening. That image is enlarged, in the small span of the film's length, from something that is glossy and pretty into something that is beautiful, arresting, powerful.