At first glance, Ho Yuhang's Rain Dogs is a beautifully shot, meandering story about a young man's struggle to become an adult. The film follows 19-year-old Dong (newcomer Kuan Choon Wai) from Kuala Lumpur to his mother's home in a small Malaysian town; from there to the home of his cousins several towns away, and finally back to his mother. Early in his journey, Dong loses his beloved older brother Hong (Cheung Wing-Hong) in a bar brawl and, though he never outwardly grieves for Hong, his death unconsciously becomes the primary driving force in Dong's life.

Already distant, Dong's relationship with his single mother gets worse in the wake of the loss of Hong. Neither of them acknowledges their suffering to the other, and when Dong's mother takes the side of her deadbeat boyfriend when Dong (correctly) accuses the man of stealing Hong's motorcycle, the tension becomes too great, and Dong flees. Finding a place with his cousins in a much smaller town many miles away, Dong struggles to make sense of his life. Paralyzed by waves of overpowering emotions and plagued by confusing desires, he struggles to connect with those around him. Dong awkwardly bonds with his uncle, only to be beaten by him a few days later; he meets a pair of sisters who spark his interest, but he has no idea what he wants from them, and even less idea what to expect from their shaky friendship; his wise, all-knowing aunt cares for him with the same tenderness she grants her grade-school age son -- hers seems the perfect approach to an utterly lost young adult.

For his part, Dong's behavior is apparently dictated by his own arbitrary decisions about how to behave. Largely silent, he drifts along, watching and listening but rarely reacting to what he encounters; it's as if he's searching for someone who will tell him how to deal with the pain and confusion he feels. Occasionally he springs into action, but only when he's emulating the behavior of someone he admires: After his uncle bizarrely decides that Dong needs to learn how to shoot, Dong sneaks out under cover of night to fire the uncle's gun. Dong has no goal in mind; his uncle thinks gunfire is manly so Dong does it, trying to vault past the confusion, straight into manhood.

It is in the somewhat comical scene with the gun -- Dong hears distant sirens in the night and panics, throwing the gun into the woods -- that the true depth and subtlety of Rain Dogs first begin to reveal themselves. To this point, we've been lulled into a state of passive acceptance by the extremely slow, awkward progress of Dong's struggle to find himself. Since he never mentions his brother, it's been easy to forget about Hong's death, and to chalk Dong's behavior up to typical teenage angst. When he picks up the gun and disappears from our vision, however, we're seized with the realization that it would be a tragic non-surprise if Dong shot himself. Through a painstaking accumulation of tiny actions and details, the director has infused Dong with a misery much deeper and more profound than we ever imagined; the revelation that we were unconsciously aware of the character's pain is astonishing, and hints at what is in store for the film's conclusion.

In that conclusion, with four magical closing shots, Ho forces a complete reevaluation of his film. The scope of his story suddenly explodes outward, and the depths at which he had previously only hinted are finally made clear. What was originally a slow-but-lovely character piece is revealed to be something much more, and the entire film gains tremendous heft and power as a result. Make no mistake -- the film's end is in no way a twist, just a profound, masterful expansion and clarification. It leaves us both deeply moved and feeling a bit foolish for not recognizing the movie's true merits earlier.