Category: Thailand

Not Friends (เพื่อน (ไม่) สนิท, Atta Hemwadee, 2023)

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There’s a gentle sense of loss that runs through Atta Hemwadee’s quirky Thai dramedy Not Friends (เพื่อน (ไม่) สนิท), not only for those who are now absent and exist only in our memories but for missed opportunities and things left unsaid. Then again, its hero, Pae (Anthony Buisseret), takes a while to warm up to the benefits of friendship, like many teenage boys resentful and alienated, unable to accept the hand extended to him by his infinitely cheerful new deskmate, Joe (Pisitpol Ekaphongpisit), who walks around with a beatific smile permanently plastered across his face. 

Before he can make amends, however, Joe is hit by a car after returning from a school trip sending the school into a period of shocked mourning that for some reason includes a talent contest. After hearing of a competition that offers entrance to film school as a prize, Pae decides to enter and to make his late “best friend” Joe the focus of the film only to immediately be caught out in his duplicity by Joe’s former best friend Bokeh (Thitiya Jirapornsilp) who resents his intention to exploit Joe’s death for his own ends. 

It has to be said, that Pae does not come out of this well though his predicament does highlight a social stigma towards working class boys in his intense desire to escape having to take over his dad’s flour mill having been teased by his former classmates about his “stinky shirt” because he has to air dry his clothes in an area adjacent to the factory. A similar sense of lonely alienation is found in a short story Joe had submitted to a story contest which is about a boy who feels hopelessly ordinary and looks up to the stars thinking about all the other versions of himself on other planets who are “special”, top athletes or super spies or dim but loved by those around him. The boy wants his other selves to see him and know that he is special too, but seems not to feel it himself. 

Coming late to the idea, Pae slowly realises that Joe is special because “Joe is our friend” though he’d mostly ignored his attempts at friendship while he was alive. In any case, he doesn’t really notice the friendships he’s making with Bokeh or the others working on the film either but remains focussed on his own goal of winning the contest and escaping the flour mill. In the end the film he’s making ends up becoming less about Joe himself and more of an ode to absent friends, something echoed in Bokeh’s valedictory speech in which she bids goodbye to her “best not friends” and hopes that though they may not meet, they’ll miss each other every now and then. 

It comes down to a question of what friendship really is and whether Pae can be persuaded to abandon his sense of self interest to defend it. He realises that Joe had a lot of dreams too, ones he never got to fulfil and a couple that could be fulfilled for him if not in reality than in fantasy imagining how their lives might have turned out if Pae had been less self-involved and Joe had lived. Still, on finding out something unexpected he’s forced to confront the idea that perhaps you don’t really know anyone. Everyone knows a slightly different version of the same person but friendship is really about shared intimacy and a willingness to be open and vulnerable while simultaneously respecting the boundaries of others.

To that extent it really is about the friends we make along the way. Pae slowly comes to realise that he’s accidentally become friends with the crew on the film and lets go of some of his resentment becoming less self-centred and more willing to interact with others even warming to his father and family business he’d previously been ashamed of while also gaining the courage to pursue his dream of a career in film. Cineliterate, Atta Hemwadee breaks the action with a filmmaking rap and makes frequent references to popular film but invests the high school movie with a wistful sense of loss and nostalgia for the absent friends of youth whom we miss once in a while but are in another sense always with us. 

 Not Friends screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Cemetery of Splendour (รักที่ขอนแก่น, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015)

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There’s a question that raises its head in the title of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendour (รักที่ขอนแก่น), is this a splendiferous resting place or the graveyard of splendour itself? The melancholy atmosphere might imply the latter, but as it turns out the place that holds a series of sleeping soldiers is built atop an ancient palace in which, an old woman is told by two young goddesses, kings continue their petty conflicts thousands of years after leaving our world.

It’s an apt enough allegory for the destructive qualities of a legacy of warfare and conflict. The old woman, Jen (Jenjira Pongpas), later exposes a lengthy and painful series of scars running from hip to knee that explain why one of her legs is much shorter than the other and the reasons she walks with a cane are much greater than simple old age. The old kings quite literally sap the spirits of the young soldiers to the extent that it has provoked a kind of sleeping sickness among them in which they must fight ancient wars in their dreams while otherwise rendered powerless to resist or change the present society.

The old woman is given a tour of the other world by a younger woman, Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), who has allowed herself to be possessed by the spirit of Itt, a young solider for whom she has begun to care after learning that he had no family to visit. The sleeping Itt, through the body of Keng, guides her through the splendid castle of his dreams but she sees only the present reality, a forest filled with detritus and trite signs bearing greeting card-esque messages of inspiration. Perhaps it’s hard not to mourn this kind of splendour that seems so absent from the world Jen now inhabits which seems to be defined by empty consumerism and loneliness. The soldiers are being cared for in an old school house, a nurse explaining the hospitals had no room for them, which carries with it a sense of melancholy nostalgia not least for Jen who was once a pupil there occupying the spot where Itt (Banlop Lomnoi) now sleeps.

But then we can’t be sure isn’t Jen who dreaming and Itt wide awake. When we see her later her eyes are open and staring as the children play on mounds of earth dredged up by an ominous digger employed by some mysterious government project. Is she awake, now more aware of the sickness in her society, or fast asleep trapped within an unending nightmare? Perhaps it’s the same either way, but the border between this world and another, if it were ever there at all, has grown thin. After making an offering at a temple, Jen is greeted by two very beautiful yet mysterious women who talk in an odd, archaic fashion. They then explain that they wanted to thank her for her gifts, but unfortunately neither Itt nor any of the other soldiers will ever recover.

This news shatters Jen’s newfound sense of connection and hope for the future. Her loneliness is palpable, yet it seems that we can connect with each other only indirectly through dreams and messengers. On waking, Itt wants to contact his family but cannot find a charger for his phone nor remember their number. He wants to quit the army to sell Taiwanese moon cakes at gas stations and claims that his senses are heightened by his experiences, that he can smell the flowers in his dreams and even now pick out the distinct fragrances at an outdoor foodcourt yet he’s still caught between this world and another suddenly and without warning falling asleep and returned to the other world. 

Someone describes the lamps of an experimental treatment first used by the Americans to help heal nightmares born of war trauma as like lanterns used for a funeral and in some ways these men are both dead and alive, like the kings of old and the goddesses. The lanterns begin to fade hypnotically from one colour to the next, ordinary scenes of shopping mall escalators dissolving into the hospital as if we too were falling asleep or perhaps waking up. What are the diggers reaching for, unearthing the long buried past or building for us our own cemetery of splendour in which we’ll sleep, comfortably, but in loneliness and melancholy with no rest from our rest? Perhaps this is why Jen’s eyes are fixed in a permanent state of vacant openness neither awake nor asleep but something painfully in-between.

Cemetery of Splendour screens at New York’s Metrograph Feb. 24 as part of Part of Fire Over Water: Films of Transcendence

Trailer (English subtitles

Creepy Crawly (๑๐๐ ร้อยขา, Pakphum Wongjinda & Chalit Krileadmongkon, 2022)

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While everyone’s busy thinking about a high profile threat of infection, an unexpected aggressor raises its ugly head in Pakphum Wongjinda and Chalit Krileadmongkon’s insectile horror Creepy Crawly (๑๐๐ ร้อยขา). Centipedes in themselves are little creepy given the undulating motion of their many legs and tendency to crawl out from places where you’d least expect them, but this particular bug seems to have undergone a mammoth evolution to become a bloodsucking parasite capable of threatening the human race!

The film opens with a naive vlogger getting lost in the Thai countryside and deciding to pitch a tent in the middle of nowhere while unable to locate her campsite despite having encountered an elderly person bleeding profusely from the mouth whom she does nothing to help. During the night she’s bothered by giant centipedes and then has some kind of altercation with the elderly person. Some months later, an emergency order has been placed on the country due to the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic. Another YouTuber, Fame, who is well known for uploading videos criticising hotel accommodation, arrives at a hotel which has been turned into a quarantine facility along with her brother, Fiew, and a family of three, adult Taekwondo champion Leo, his naive sister Lena, and their father who is deaf. 

Obviously, the centipede, which is later described as a Tablongplum which can possess a human body and feast on its blood, has somehow made its way to the hotel and is particularly interested in Fame because she suffers from a rare disease which means that her blood would enable the Tablongplum to live a very long life. However, the bugs aren’t the only threat in the hotel even if they’re first discovered by the only remaining maid, Pond, feasting on a dead rat in a vacant room. The sleazy manager, Wit, is paranoid about the fortunes of his hotel during the pandemic considering it has already been dealt a reputational blow after being identified as the source of a covid cluster. It’s implied that he’s only got permission to re-open as a quarantine facility thanks to a dodgy deal with an important person who has also turned up, ironically belittling Wit for wearing a mask while describing covid as a “just a cold”, for a completely free and very discreet overnight stay with his mistress. 

Those are just a few of the reasons that Wit refuses to listen when Fame and Leo discover a body at the end of a blood trail, accusing them of being in cahoots doing a bit for the YouTube channel to further discredit his hotel which even on the surface of things seems not to be particularly well run. With the hotel technically in lockdown and patrolled by an armed guard, the tension begins to increase once it’s realised that the Tablongplum can possess and take on the form of any of the guests meaning no one can trusted and the bug could be anywhere. Somewhat improbably, not only is it able to fully understand human language even independent of its human hosts but also seems to have some knowledge of culture and is aware of how various things work rather than just being a giant blood sucking parasite apparently able to control vast armies of much smaller but admittedly nasty bugs especially when they appear in large numbers. 

The solution seems to be “kill it with fire”, though just the pandemic the bugs prove hard to stamp out with the infection seemingly continuing even after the big bad is supposedly eliminated as the centipedes continue to dominate human society. The film seems to be making a minor point about silly YouTubers who endanger themselves or thoughtlessly ruin the lives of others for clicks while also laying the blame on sleazy managers like Wit along with the political corruption that enables a health hazard to continue long after it should. Meanwhile, tiny bugs eat away at the surface, undermining the foundations as they go. Seeing an entire hotel covered in horrible insects is undoubtedly creepy though perhaps there was something rotten there all along. In any case, it seems there’s no escape from nature’s revenge or its bloodsucking tendrils. 

Creepy Crawly is released in the US on Digital, blu-ray, and DVD on Oct. 3 courtesy of Well Go USA.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Faces of Anne (แอน, Kongdej Jaturanrasmee & Rasiguet Sookkarn, 2022)

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A young woman wakes up in a grimy hotel room with floral wallpaper marked by damp stains. She discovers that the window is frosted over and won’t open while she has no idea of how she got there or who she is but otherwise instinctively knows that the face she sees in the mirror does not belong to her. She tries to call out and hears a voice from an adjacent room telling her to be quiet and that her name is “Anne”. Anne asks her how she knows if she can’t see her, but the voice just tells her that she knows her name is Anne with no further explanation. 

As it turns out in Kongdej Jaturanrasmee & Rasiguet Sookkarn’s Faces of Anne (แอน) every girl in the place has the same name and as gradually becomes apparent are all reflections of a single personality. The key Anne discovers that her face seems to change seemingly at random leaving her uncertain even within the bounds of her fractured identity. A psychiatrist tells her that a name is “not as important as who you are” while encouraging her to learn to accept the face she sees as her own, but she remains confused, abstracted from herself, and unable to reconcile her selfhood with its reflection. Meanwhile, she is stalked by a violent demon in the guise of a deer name Vitigo who wanders the hospital corridors taking out any Annes that it finds. 

What seems to be going on is an attempt to reintegrate the shards of a fractured personality into a coherent whole only it’s manifesting as a massacre of the self as the demon bumps off each of the multiple Annes insisting that only one, the “real” Anne, can be allowed to leave. But then no one is really only one person but presents a series of personas to the outside world all of whom can be said to be “real” even if otherwise inauthentic. In an illuminating flashback, high school girl Anne chats with another couple of girls about fake online profiles where they can share their “real” selves each of which of course have a completely different profile photo much as the serial Annes have a different face. What we can assume to be the key Anne expresses that she just wants to find a place where she can be completely herself and thinks she has one in a relationship with a boyfriend whose face we never see but had shades both of a man who might be her father and the hero of a video game the atmosphere of which seems to have coloured the aesthestics of her eerie mindscape. 

Some might find it easy to dismiss her identity crisis as teenage angst or to suggest that what she’s suffering from is a broken heart though Kongdej Jaturanrasmee & Rasiguet Sookkarn also make reference to a number of problems faced by young people in contemporary Thailand such as online harassment and bullying, sexual harrassment at school and the bad student movement protesting an oppressive educational environment laying bare the pressures on key Anne’s mind that might cause her to become estranged from herself. Asking probing questions about identity, the film wonders if Anne can learn to find herself as distinct from all of these images or if in the end identity and image are inextricably linked to the extent that they can no longer exist distinctly and Anne has no power to identify herself but must rely on the identification of others. Then again, the voice from the other room knows she is Anne without seeing her precisely as she is also Anne, identifying herself in the absence of image. 

Eerie and filled with a Lynchian dread in its hellish lightning and grimy hotel room setting, the film turns Anne’s psychodrama into an existential slasher in which she awaits the arrival of the Final Girl. Retracing her steps, she seeks escape in a pattern of trial and error unwittingly at war with herself even as tussles over identity and authenticity while trying to reconstruct a shattered identity by reclaiming the images of the past or perhaps as simply as the psychiatrist had put it learning to accept the face she now wears as her own. Haunting and empathetic, the film has only sympathy for the wandering ghosts of a fractured mind and the vague hope that together they can put Anne together again. 

Faces of Anne screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © M Pictures Entertainment Public Company Limited.

Kitty the Killer (อีหนูอันตราย, Lee Thongkham, 2023)

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“You might be the stupidest killer I ever met” an ice cool assassin says of the bumbling hero at the centre of Lee Thongkham’s comic book action comedy Kitty the Killer (อีหนูอันตราย). She might indeed have a point, though as Charlie (Denkhun Ngamnet) points out killing is not strictly part of his job description which is more akin to a baby sitter for the “high school girl from hell” under his care, Dina (Ploypailin Thangprapaporn). In part a story of self-transformation, the film ironically plays with a series of genre tropes while providing a point of origin for an ongoing universe. 

As the film opens, Charlie is a feckless young man who can’t seem to get it together and is struggling to make a mark in his job as an “accounts manager” where he is semi-aware that everyone thinks of him as a bit useless. He muses on the difficulties of changing the way that others see him, but never quite takes the first step towards realising that what he needs to change is himself. Nevertheless, his life is changed for him when he runs into top assassin Grey Wolf shortly after The Agency tried to off him when he told them he wanted out of the game. Fearing he’s not long to live, Grey Wolf hands Charlie his trademark ring and tells him that he’s taken out a contract on his mum so if he doesn’t manage to rescue his associate Dina his whole family will be killed. 

Dragged into a world of assassins and conspiracy, Charlie has little option than to rise to the occasion shaking off his boring office boy persona to become a stylish handler perfectly equipped to face off against vicious killers as the gang chase vengeance for Grey Wolf and battle another faction of their own organisation which has apparently cut a deal with the Japanese which is why they all wear masks and carry katana. Lee Thongkham plays with a kind of re-imported orientalism in clear references to Kill Bill, even echoing a famous line in the film when assassin Nina the Faceless says to Charlie, “silly boy like you likes to play with swords.”

The line also hints at the subversion of traditional roles in play as Charlie becomes a male intruder in what in an otherwise a female space. Known as “Kitties” all the assassins are female though aside from villainess Violent all the handlers are men who are otherwise placed in a paternal role yet sidelined as nannies to the super-powered killers over whom they have almost total control. As Violet says, The Agency also has its rules and they are nothing if they do not obey. Charlie is to a degree raised by the four assassins under boss Makin (Vithaya Pansringarm) who train him to become to a capable handler allowing him to transform himself as he said he wanted to do in his opening voiceover while his mother otherwise pampers him at home. 

Nevertheless, the film also sympathises with the constrained lives of the Kitties who are told to have no emotions and that they must eliminate anyone who gets too close to them or witnesses them going about their business. As one of Dina’s “sisters” Tina remarks, she’s “just tired” of her emotionless life and lack of freedom, while Nina who already turned to the dark side tries to seduce them with false promises of greater autonomy under female boss Violet if simultaneously telling them they’d have to kill their friends and “family” in order to win it. In any case, it’s the sense of solidarity between the Kitties and the deeper than expected bond with their handlers that becomes the best weapon against Violet’s hostile take over of The Agency. Well, that and a magic stone that has the power to grant immortality, anyway. Filled with a good deal of deliberately silly dialogue and zany humour, the film also features a number of innovatively choreographed action sequences along with elaborate production design and the occasional use of onscreen graphics and animation. The depth of the world building hints at the potential for an ongoing series with a post-credits epilogue teasing a sequel offering further intrigue for the Kitties and their distinctly goofy handler in an expanding comic universe of retro charm. 

Kitty the Killer screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

You & Me & Me (เธอกับฉันกับฉัน, Weawwan Hongvivatana & Wanweaw Hongvivatana, 2023)

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A pair of identical twins come to consider an inevitable separation on the eve of the Millennium in twin directors Wanweaw Hongvivatana and Weawwan Hongvivatana’s quirky Thai comedy You & Me & Me (เธอกับฉันกับฉัน). Set in 1999 and apparently autobiographically inspired, the film follows the two young women as they face the coming end of the world in Y2K anxiety, but for all that their world really is ending as they find themselves shipped off to the country with their mother as their parents embark on a trial separation with the looming threat of divorce. 

Amusingly named “You” and “Me”, the girls (both played by Thitiya Jirapornsilp) are all but inseparable and reflect that they are glad never to feel lonely and always to have someone to share things with. They rejoice in their sameness rather than resenting it and often use it to trick the world around them so they can get two dinners for the price of one or sneak each other into cinemas on a single ticket. They swap places all the time and occasionally sit exams for each other to maximise their individual strengths. But then, when Me sits a maths exam for You she ends up meeting fellow student Mark (Anthony Buisseret) who “shares” his pencil with her by breaking it in two. Mark then abruptly disappears, but the girls reencounter him once they go to stay with their grandmother in the country (Karuna Looktumthong) where he has also relocated following his parents’ divorce only he thinks the girl he gave his pencil to was You, not Me. 

Mark may be the first thing they can’t really “share” though in a way that’s what they end up doing. Me never tells her sister she likes Mark, and You doesn’t realise it was Me he liked at the maths exam, but gradually he starts to come between them if only in disrupting their dynamic as You starts to want more time away from her sister and Me feels as if she’s being abandoned. Half a melting ice lolly lying untouched in a glass seems to neatly sum up her views about the changing nature of their relationship as sisters. But then they’re also at the age in which their sameness might start to bother them. Me abruptly goes out and gets a different haircut, as if she wanted to play her sister at her own game and assert her individuality even if it ends their childish games of place swapping and trickery. 

The millennial apocalypse is also a symptom of their adolescent anxiety as they try to come to terms with impending adulthood and the changes that will inevitably take place in their lives meaning they too will need to split and necessarily head in different directions though it doesn’t mean they’ll be less close or connected, especially with the “Y2K safe” mobile phones their dad tragically thinks are his next big business opportunity. The film takes them from Bangkok to the country where their grandmother still speaks in dialect and in all honesty Y2K might not matter all that much even if the girls run up grandma’s tab in the local shop trying to prepare for the end of the world. The television news is full of tales of mass suicides and Nostradamus, but their problems are both bigger and smaller as they ponder fresh starts in a new century which is only really the entrance to the next stage of their lives. 

Millennial nostalgia and the laidback atmosphere of the Thai countryside lend the film a peaceful air of serenity as the girls begin shift towards acknowledging their individual identities over their bond as sisters, not exactly rejecting their sameness but adjusting it in considering the future paths of their lives. Playing both sisters, Thitiya Jirapornsilp captures a sense of what make Me Me and You You but also what they are together and the anxieties they each face as twins, something of which the directors have first hand knowledge in repeatedly insisting that in the end twins are just the same as everyone else even if the girls sometimes have trouble separating themselves from each other. Strangely poignant in its Millennial conclusion, the film nevertheless ends on a note of warmth and solidarity in which the two sisters prepare to step into the new century independently and together no longer so afraid of whatever it might bring. 

You & Me & Me screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ©2023 GDH 559 Co., Ltd.

Arnold Is a Model Student (อานนเป็นนักเรียนตัวอย่าง, Sorayos Prapapan, 2022)

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“School is our first dictatorship” a collection of students exclaims in Sorayos Prapapan’s absurdist satire Arnold is a Model Student (อานนเป็นนักเรียนตัวอย่าง). Drawing inspiration from the Bad Student movement, the film positions the educational system as a microcosm of the whole as the students find themselves trying of petty authoritarian oppressions and the infinite corruption of the very mechanism they are told allows them to take control over their futures even as it denies them the right to self-expression or individual freedom. 

In his last year of high school, Arnold (Korndanai Marc Dautzenberg) has brought great praise to his institution after winning a gold medal in the maths Olympiad. Arnold is, however, far from a model student. Low-key rebellious he ignores all rules and does as he pleases but is largely allowed to get away with it because of his value to the school as a symbol of their own success especially as they are currently in the running for an award from the Ministry of Education. Then again this lack of censure seems to tug at Arnold’s sense of conscience wondering what the point of the rules is if they simply don’t apply to him in the same way they apply to others. Mrs. Wanee (Niramon Busapavanich), the school’s most authoritarian disciplinarian, is fond of saying that the rules are necessary for a harmonious society but even the students can see they’re mostly about preserving her own power and status.

In some way perhaps Mrs. Wanee isn’t so different from authoritarian teachers anywhere else in the world if a little more extreme in literally snipping students’ hair if she judges it to be an inappropriate length on her morning inspections. A trio of girls giggle about a man with mental health problems who was hiding in the bathrooms at a shopping mall to snip women’s hair for his wig shop and only then realise that it’s not really all that different to what Mrs Wanee is doing to them in restricting their rights to free expression over the way they look and dress. What seems to her proper discipline seems to them absurd and oppressive and even worse inculcating in them a tolerance for authoritarianism that enables the survival of corrupt dictatorship. 

In essence this is an elite school but as proud as it is of kids like Arnold, who appears to come from a wealthy family, it’s also true that most of its pupils have got in through thinly concealed bribery as parents agree to make “donations” in return for the headmaster finding a place for their less able children. Yet Arnold’s privilege only contributes to his rootlessness and lack of purpose. He doesn’t know what to do with his life in part because he has no real impetus to make a decision and few constraints on his choices. When other students ask him to join the protest movement he refuses stating that he doesn’t see the point, they’ll be finished with school in a few months anyway, thinking solely of himself and making the calculation that the smart thing to do is nothing.

He finds himself similarly conflicted when taken under the wing of dodgy cram school teacher (Winyu Wongsurawat) who runs a scam operation getting talented students to help weaker ones cheat in exams as a fast track path to stable government jobs. Arnold is disadvantaging himself twice over, taking the money but increasing his competition while remaining complicit with corruption, fostering poor government in allowing those without the proper skills to prosper and hold on to their unearned privilege. Resentful that his father, a French citizen, was deported for criticising the government, what Arnold wants is to go abroad but in doing so he’d also be leaving those unable to protect themselves behind simply harnessing his own privilege to remove himself from the system rather than actively resist it. 

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the resistance is largely led by the female students who eventually tell the headmaster that they no longer care if he expels them because there will always be students coming behind them who also will resist and expelling them all would be entirely counterproductive. Sorayos Prapapan’s deadpan approach signals the absurdity of the culture in the schools system in which pupils are given pointless lessons in citizenship which are little more than nationalist propaganda while forced to learn proper “manners” which is also only another way to bow to authority. The director even inserts a scene of a boy with his own name who has to kneel before a teacher and recite his times tables, while the school’s downfall comes about through the new medium of youth resistance TikTok as Sorayos Prapapan includes what appears to be real footage of students receiving corporal punishment in this contemporary era. Ironically the lesson that students learn is that authoritarianism must be challenged at its roots and that only by standing together can they hope to defeat it. Quirky yet clear eyed and heartfelt Sorayos Prapapan’s gentle satire is at least somewhat hopeful in the determination of the young people not to fall for the promise of superficial success in a corrupt system but to fight hard for the freedom they know to be rightfully theirs.

Arnold Is a Model Student screened as part of this year’s Five Flavours Film Festival and is available to stream in Poland until 4th December.

Original trailer (dialogue free)

Fast & Feel Love (เร็วโหด..เหมือนโกรธเธอ, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, 2022) [Fantasia 2022]

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A 30-something couple find themselves pulled in different directions by their conflicting desires in Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s post-modern comedy, Fast & Feel Love (เร็วโหด..เหมือนโกรธเธอ). As the title implies, the self-involved hero is eventually forced to accept that his success is founded on the support of those around him while belatedly stepping in to adulthood in undergoing a baptism of fire learning basic life skills along with the confidence to look after himself in a new world of grownup responsibilities. 

Jay (Urassaya Sperbund) and Kao (Nat Kitcharit) met as outsiders in high school, she excelling in English but not much else aside from her love of plants, and Kao obsessed with the art of sport stacking and dreaming of becoming a champion. 10 years later the pair are still a couple, kind of, living in a well-appointed home which they technically co-own though its clear Jay is shouldering the mortgage along with all the other domestic responsibilities. Kao is technically arrested in childhood, spending all of his time shut up in his room practicing sport stacking oblivious that others in his life have sacrificed themselves on his behalf. Jay used to think that it was all worth it as long as Kao achieved his sport stacking dreams but now she’s reached a crisis point realising that for everything she’s done for Kao she’s got very little back and if she waits much longer her own small dream of becoming a mother and having a conventional family life may pass her by. 

There is something of an irony in the fact that all of Kao’s major challengers are young children though as he points out sport stacking is an egalitarian sport in which things like age, gender, and nationality are irrelevant. Having successfully broken a record, Kao begins receiving creepy phone calls from a new rival, Edward, a little boy in Colombia who complains to his mother asking why people can’t go on stacking forever only for her to point out that adults have other things in their lives they have to attend to though Edward simply doesn’t understand. To begin with, Kao doesn’t either because he’s been lucky enough to be surrounded by people who supported his dream and went out of their way to make it easy for him by relieving him of basic tasks so that he could devote himself entirely to sport stacking. Because it had always been this way, it never really occurred to Kao that he needed to grow up and begin taking some responsibility for himself or at least acknowledge the sacrifices others were making on his behalf. 

When Jay eventually leaves him fearful that she’s wasted too much time and he’s never going to change, Kao is suddenly confronted by the frightening world of adulthood in which he must finally learn to look after himself while simultaneously accepting that it’s alright to ask for and receive help while helping others in return. What appealed to him about sport stacking was that it could be done alone, yet he failed to use the sport to block out everything else but was perpetually bothered by the intrusions of ordinary life his concentration ruined by the slightest noise. What he learns is that he cannot, and does not want to, win alone but only thanks to the support he receives from those around him while accepting that perhaps it’s time to move on from competitive sport stacking. 

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit throws in plenty of meta references as Kao breaks the fourth wall or laments that he thought this was supposed to be an action movie but he’s hardly done any stacking at all and people might be disappointed. An extended running gag directly references Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, while one of the kids Kao teaches at the sport stacking club talks like a gangster because she’s apparently watched too much John Wick. Even so, the relationship between Jay and Kao is drawn with a poignant naturalism rather than rom-com superficiality that allows Kao to accept that it’s time for them both to do what makes them happy even if that means they may not be able to stay together while little Edward seems to come to the same conclusion, ahead of the game in realising that a prize you don’t really want may not be worth winning. 

Fast & Feel Love screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Images: ©2022 GDH 559 Co., Ltd.

Yes or No (Yes or No อยากรัก ก็รักเลย, Saratswadee Wongsomphet, 2010)

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An uptight girl from a wealthy conservative family finds herself conflicted on falling for her tomboyish farmer’s daughter roommate in Saratswadee Wongsomphet’s romantic dramedy, Yes or No (Yes or No อยากรัก ก็รักเลย, Yak Rak Ko Rak Loei). Yes or no is in some ways the question each of the heroines find themselves asking struggling not only with their feelings for each other but their respective identities along with stereotypical visions of homosexuality wondering if it’s your appearance that defines you or something less visible deeper inside. 

That’s something doubly true for Pie (Sucharat Manaying), who exasperatedly exclaims that she “ran away from a lesbian” and “ended up with a tom”. As the film opens we see her switching rooms in her uni dorm explaining to her mother on the phone that her previous roommate, Jane (Arisara Tongborisuth), was perfectly nice but had a lot of problems notably her heartbroken sobbing on being dumped by her latest suitor who happened to be a butch lesbian. Pie leaves that bit out in talking with her mother, later revealing that her mum hates anything gay or even androgynous and finds tomboyish women disturbing.That’s one reason why she immediately tries to switch rooms again only to run into Kim (Suppanad Jittaleela) on coming out of the shower. 

For her part, Kim largely rejects the “tom” label and repeatedly reminds Pie she is a girl who happens to have short hair and is dressed in a comfortable fashion. Nevertheless, she continues to experience a degree of hostility based on her appearance, a gang of sexist boys giving up on their cheesy pickup lines while taunting her as she walks past. “She’s more handsome than me” one of them jokes as Kim ignores them with Pie looking on from an upper balcony. Kim isn’t particularly aware of her sexuality either, seeing herself as inherently different from those like Jane who readily identify themselves as lesbians while confused on two levels seeming to simultaneously believe both that Pie cannot be a lesbian because lesbians look the way she herself does and that she is not a lesbian and should not be assumed to be one simply because of her appearance in which she obviously has a point. 

Pie’s animosity towards Kim is originally so extreme that, on being unable to switch yet again, she simply runs red tape down the centre of the room though she has also brought with her much more stuff than simple farmer’s daughter Kim. The resentment only really eases once she comes to appreciate that Kim has unexpected skills such as the ability to run up delicious meals in only a rice cooker. In a running gag, the supposedly masculine Kim is often afraid of childish things such as cockroaches and thunder storms, while Pie declares herself fearless but is actually deeply afraid and carrying a degree of internalised shame while confused by her changing feelings for Kim. Though they continue to grow closer, not only pulling up the tape but pushing their beds together, each continue to hold back Kim trying to figure out her identity and Pie preoccupied with her mother’s homophobia. While Pie is jealous of Jane who is also in love with Kim, Kim contends with Pie’s family friend, Waen (Soranut Yupanun), her mother’s chosen suitor and the symbol of the lingering heteronormativity that overshadows their relationship, 

Then again, there may be an uncomfortable emphasis placed on traditional gender roles in which the tomboyish Kim is cast as the man, eventually trying to cement her relationship with Pie by approaching her mother for permission to date her despite knowing of her animosity to what she labels “abnormal sexuality” having taken one look at Kim on campus and exclaimed “good thing you aren’t like that or I’d be dead by now”. Kim’s farmer father and his male best friend (?) meanwhile, are far more understanding instantly welcoming Pie when she, essentially, tries to do the same thing seeking Kim’s forgiveness for having faltered in the moment and failed to stand up to her mother. While there might also be an unpleasant stereotype in Jane’s emotional instability which later leads her to the point of self harm in the depths of her unrequited love, and the gang’s gay male friend is depicted rather shallowly little more than as sassy and effeminate, Yes or No nevertheless does its best to navigate the difficult path on which the women find themselves figuring out their feelings for each other and perhaps discovering the only important question is is this love, yes or no. 

Yes or No screened as part of this year’s Queer East. It is also available to stream in many territories via GagaOOLala.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Love of Siam (รักแห่งสยาม, Chookiat Sakveerakul, 2007)

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Two young men contending with grief and familial dislocation begin to wonder if it’s possible to love someone knowing that you’ll lose them, or conversely if it’s possible to live without love in Chookiat Sakveerakul’s melancholy drama Love of Siam (รักแห่งสยาม, Rak haeng Siam). The title may sound overly patriotic but in actuality refers to the Siam Square shopping area when the boys meet again as teenagers after many years apart and rekindle their friendship only to be confused by their growing feelings for each other while each struggling with contradictory demands from fracturing family and romantic drama to the responsibilities of friendship and career. 

When they first meet as small boys, Mew (Arthit Niyomkul), who has come to live with his elderly grandmother, and Tong (Jirayu La-ongmanee) live opposite each other in a small Bangkok back street. When Mew is hassled in the school toilets, Tong comes to his rescue and gains a black eye in the process, cementing the boys’ friendship. Everything begins to change, however, when Tong goes on holiday with his family to Chiang Mai. His older sister Tang (Laila Boonyasak) stays on to hang out with friends and later disappears during a hiking trip leaving the family devastated. To escape their grief they decide to move away, breaking the friendship between the two boys. A decade or so later, they re-encounter each other by chance in Siam Square where Tong (Mario Maurer) is trying to buy a CD of rising boyband August of which Mew (Witwisit Hiranyawongkul) just happens to be the lead singer. 

In the intervening years, Tong has become somewhat distant and is now in an unsatisfying relationship with one of the school’s most popular girls, Donut (Aticha Pongsilpipat). As we discover, his father has developed an alcohol problem unable to overcome his guilt and grief over what happened to Tang, while his mother attempts to power through by exerting control over every aspect of her life. In a shocking coincidence, Mew’s band manager June (Laila Boonyasak) happens to look exactly like Tang, Tong and his mother eventually asking her to play the part of the absent sibling in the hope of curing his father’s depression. 

As much as the film revolves around the love story between the boys as they begin to figure out their sexuality, at the end it’s a story of love in its many forms and key among them the familial. Both the boys are in a sense displaced, Mew for reasons not explicitly stated living not with his father but his grandmother and then as a teenager alone following her death while Tong is caught between his grieving parents looking for new signs of stability. Understandably anxious, Tong’s mother still makes a point of picking him up by car though he is already a teenager when such solicitation might seem embarrassing. When she catches Tong kissing Mew, her world is destabilised attempting to reassert her control by asking Mew to stay away from her son fearful of losing him and the life she’d envisioned for his future with a wife and children. Yet through her interactions with June, who is also displaced having lost her parents in some kind of accident, she begins to realise that her need for control is not the way to save her family as they each begin to face their grief and repair their familial bonds accepting both the continuing presence and absence of Tang as symbolised by the family photo taken on their last holiday in which she is not pictured but only because she was standing behind the camera. 

In this way, Mew perhaps gets his answer to whether it’s possible to go on loving someone knowing that you’ll lose them unwilling to live a life without love even if the price is grief and loneliness. Where there’s love, there’s hope according to a Chinese song translated by Mew’s lovelorn neighbour, Ying (Kanya Rattapetch), who becomes an accidental friend of Tong learning to put her hurt and jealousy aside to embrace her friendship with both boys. As someone else puts it, mistakes are just opportunities for change and perhaps doing the wrong thing out of love is better than doing nothing at all. Nevertheless, as the family begins to repair itself, healing in mutual acceptance along with acceptance of their loss, the youngsters discover the strength to accept themselves discovering their place amid the admittedly chaotic streets of Siam Square. 

Love of Siam screens at Rich Mix on 29th May as part of this year’s Queer East.

Original trailer (English subtitles)