Wonderland: a sweet, inviting, family-friendly film from Singapore.

This intimately shot feature is that modern marvel: a simple character-driven story well told.

Chai Yee-Wei’s tender, deeply felt, and human-scaled Wonderland—which I just saw at the Palm Springs International Film Festival—is set in 1980s Singapore as Asia’s rising economic tiger is beginning its global ascent and looking to America as the promised land of advancement. It pivots around the protective white lies family members tell each other to…