This has got to be my first superb non-mainstream film of 2005 [to be fair, I haven't seen many so far, as the selection in Hong Kong, where I spent Jan. and Feb, is rather limited.] Pen-ek Ratanaruang, the director and the co-screenwriter, is genius. Everything in the film came together nicely: the eccentric OCD-clean-freak-suicidal male character; a plot that drifts between realistic fantacies and absurd reality; the comical yazuka cameos; the awkward tension in the long silences between the minimal, but skillfully crafted dialogue; the slow pacing and the washed out palette; the setting in a Japanese expat's Bangkok, (How is it possible to make Bangkok look so non-descript???) and a rural Thailand that seems to be stuck in a 70's time capsule. Only at the end of the film did I realise Chris Doyle was responsible for the cinematography, which might explain how the images manage to feel rich in texture, even when the colours look grey and washed out. And it's quite a mystery how Tadanobu Asano manages to look so introvert, so nerdy and so hot at the same time.
Watch trailer here
No comments:
Post a Comment