Cream of the cinematic crop

Cream of the cinematic crop

Red-letter reels to watch out for at the World Film Festival of Bangkok, which opens today

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Cream of the cinematic crop

Here we go again. The 11th World Film Festival of Bangkok kicks off tonight with The Rocket, and over the next 10 days more than 50 films will be made available for your perusal at SF World Cinema at Central World.

What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love

As is the case at practically every movie festival, the extensive choice is as much a blessing as it is a headache. I venture to list below some of my personal favourites, based on prior viewing, but I strongly recommend that you browse through the festival's website (www.worldfilmbkk.com) to find what might best suit your tastes.

The festival runs at SF World Cinema until November 24. Tickets cost 120 baht.

OUR PICKS

What They Don't Talk About When They Talk About Love (by Mouly Surya, Indonesia)

- Nov 17 at 3.20pm and Nov 24 at 3.30pm

Is love blind? If so, the perfect love story (though true love is never perfect) should involve people who can see through the blinding light of love. Set almost entirely in a school for the visually impaired, this sensitive, at times luminous and yet unblinking Indonesian film focuses on two girls _ one totally blind, the other with a crippling case of myopia _ who experience the flowers and thorns of puppy romance, with a dash of dark fairy tales and moments of lucid wonder. The title, of course, is a twist on Raymond Carver's famous short story about the disillusioning maze of marriage and relationships, but this film, written and directed by a woman, acknowledges both the sweetness of budding romance and the inevitable deception (and even brutality) that comes with every kiss, caress and love letter. Is love blind? According to the film, no. Love, like light or poetry or cinema, enables us to see. With fine performances by Karina Salim, Ayushita, and Nicholas Saputra.

Tom at the Farm (Xavier Dolan, Canada)

- Nov 16 at 6pm and Nov 23 at 1pm

Tom at the Farm

The new film by Xavier Dolan (I Killed My Mother, Laurence Anyways) is a sinister psycho-thriller taking place in a grim village somewhere in the Canadian province of Quebec. In this muddy, gloomy setting, the director, who also stars as the leading man, cleverly probes the disturbing aftermath of unfinished love, romantic and familial, as well as the invisible barriers that cause class friction. Tom, a posh young advertising executive, arrives at a backwoods farm to meet the family of his recently deceased boyfriend. There, he meets his lover's distraught, loony mother and his sadistic, possibly homophobic brother. His plan to return home right after the funeral goes awry and Tom gets stuck at the farm, part prisoner and part aggrieved lover looking for an unlikely redemption. Dolan's potion of sorrow and suspense is oddly effective here.

Tabu (Miguel Gomes, Portugal)

- Nov 19 at 8.20pm and Nov 23 at 9pm

One of the best films of 2012, this Portuguese offering is a rare achievement. Eccentric, romantic and profoundly cinematic, Tabu's black-and-white images (in the vintage 4:3 ratio) are as majestic as they are saturated with oddball details, dry humour and the de-exoticised luxuriance of the endless savannah. At the centre is Aurora, first seen as an ageing aristocrat adrift in the melancholic cityscape of modern Lisbon, and later, in the film's long flashback, as a beautiful, intrepid hunter of wild animals in an unnamed Portuguese colony in Africa. Aurora's love affair with an Italian is rich with erotic sadness, and it also opens up to the larger themes of the movie: lost empire, doomed love, colonial guilt _ this latter element as stubborn and haunting as a restless ghost. This is an early masterpiece of the current decade.

Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie, France)

- Nov 21 at 8.30pm and Nov 22 at 9pm

I'll say only this: you have to see this brilliant French film _ definitely one of the year's best _ on the big screen at this festival where I'm sure it won't be subjected to mutilating censorship (moralising is counter-revolutionary, at least in art). A triumph of form, mood and titillation, Stranger by the Lake takes place in and around a sunny, pebble-strewn lakeside beach frequented by gay men, young and old, slender and fat, in bathing shorts or in nothing at all. The film is an intriguing cross between art and porn, between murder mystery and impressionist painting, between fleeting romance and eroticised danger _ which is the only kind of danger worth risking death for. Mark your calendar.

Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan)

- Nov 21 at 8.30pm and Nov 22 at 9pm

Stray Dogs

The long-take aesthetics of Tsai Ming-liang is a source of wonder to some and frustration to others. Here is beauty that requires patience, lots of patience, and just like you might stare at a painting that fascinates you for several minutes, every single frame in Stray Dogs requires you to take the time to explore the spatial precision as well as the characters who occupy it. Lee Kang-sheng, an actor regularly used by this director, plays a homeless man with two children in tow. He earns a living at busy intersections holding up placards advertising new apartments, and sleeps in an abandoned concrete ruin. A tale of urban despair and human (dis)connection, Stray Dogs takes us further into the realm of intimate dreams and tender loneliness thanks to the extreme manner in which it stretches cinematic time.

The Rocket (Kim Mordaunt, Australia)

- Nov 24 at 1pm

This lovely coming-of-age film is directed by an Australian, set in Laos and features a mostly Thai cast. It tells the story of Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe), a boy believed to be jinxed because his twin brother died when he was born. When Ahlo's family is ordered to relocate from their hamlet to clear the way for a new hydro-electric dam, the boy treks through a rugged rural landscape seeded with rusty, unexploded bombs looking for a place to resettle his father and grandmother. Along the way, he befriends a James Brown impersonator named Purple (Thai comedian Thep Phongam, stealing the show with his eccentric tics) and his young niece. The band of misfits make their way to a village where a bung fai festival (featuring huge rockets fashioned from bamboo) is taking place.

Tribute to Jarunee Suksawad

- Baan Saithong (Nov 18 at 8.30pm and Nov 23 at 3.30pm) and Pojjaman Sawangwong (Nov 20 at 8.40pm and Nov 22 at 6pm)

Opportunities to watch vintage melodrama on a big screen are few and far between, so make the most of this chance. Two classic films starring Jarunee Suksawad are to be screened as part of a tribute to one of the biggest Thai actresses of the 1980s; during the festival, Jarunee will be presented with a Lotus Award in recognition of her contributions to the domestic film industry. In Baan Saithong (1987) _ a story that's well known to Thai audiences _ Jarunee plays Pojjaman, a golden-hearted rural girl who arrives in Bangkok to stay with her rich cousins and ultimately triumphs over their prejudices. In the sequel, Pojjaman Sawangwong (1987), Jarunee reprises the role of the young woman who's now all set to wed one of her wealthy cousins, to the utter dismay of the entire household.

Various independent Thai films

- Please check screening times on www.worldfilmbkk.com

The World Film Festival of Bangkok has always given space to local indie film-makers and a number of these home-grown features have been included in this year's line-up. There are titles that have already been released in commercial cinemas, such as Tang Wong and Karaoke Girl. But the festival will also host Thai premieres of a few brand-new Thai films, notably The Isthmus, a drama about an eight-year-old girl and her mother set largely in the border town of Ranong (directed by Sopawan Boonnimitra and Peerachai Kerdsint). The festival will also premiere By the River, a prize-winning documentary about Klity Creek, the river in Kanchanaburi province which was contaminated with cadmium (directed by Nontawat Numbenchapol), as well as Village of Hope, a family drama set in the countryside (directed by Boonsong Nakphoo).

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