In the snowy German capital, the year's first major cinema festival has kicked off. The 65th Berlin International Film Festival (or Berlinale, as it's better known) opened last night with Nobody Wants The Night, a drama by Spanish director Isabel Coixet, starring Juliette Binoche and Rinko Kikuchi. Some of the hot world premieres include Terrence Malick's Knight Of Cups, Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella, Werner Herzog's Queen Of The Desert, and other art-house darlings. The Berlinale runs until Feb 15, with the Golden Bear being announced next weekend.
How To Win At Checkers (Every Time).
Thailand is having a good year in Berlin. A record three films from the Kingdom feature, and though they're not in the main competition (and thus not in the race for the Golden Bear), to have three titles in Berlinale's official selection signals Thai cinema is still throbbing with life.
Two of the three films — How To Win At Checkers (Every Time), and The Blue Hour — are freshly finished works by young directors that, coincidentally, deal with the subject of youth and homosexuality, and both are showing in the Panorama section (which showcases eclectic works and not always art house-heavy). The other film, So Be It, is a documentary on a novice monk that was released on one screen in Bangkok last year. At the Berlinale it will be shown in the Generation section, a programme dedicated to children's films.
Classifying a film according to its "nationality" has grown more problematic (not necessarily a bad thing) in a world of cross-frontier influences. How to Win At Checkers (Every Time) is a case in point. The film has been adapted from two short stories written by US-based Thai writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap and directed by Korean-American Josh Kim, who's been working on this project in Bangkok the past few years. It stars an all-Thai cast and revolves around a white-knuckled rite of passage experienced by most Thai men at the age of 21 — the military draft day.
Kim said that he fell in love with the source stories, published in 2005 in the collection Sightseeing. Because the story is set in Thailand, it was "a world I had never seen, yet populated with characters I felt like I knew from my own childhood", said the 34-year-old director. "It soon became a story I wanted to tell through film."
In 2012, Kim moved to Bangkok, took an intensive Thai-language course, and began writing the film. In How To Win At Checkers (Every Time), he has conflated two of Rattawut's short stories, Draft Day and At The Cafe Lovely, into one coming-of-age tale about an 11-year-old orphan boy, Oat, and his older brother, Ek, a gay man who works as a bartender in a dubious provincial "cafe". Then comes the military draft day — where Ek and 100 other men pick a lottery ticket from a jar that will determine if they have to spend the next two years in barracks — and at that point, this sensitive film about brotherly love manages to touch on the bigger subject of contemporary Thailand.
Kim has made a film that brims with heart and pathos, and though there are finer points in its interpretation of the Thai condition that can be discussed further, How To Win At Checkers is definitely one film audiences should look forward to this year. The release date is still to be confirmed.
Next in the Berlinale slot is The Blue Hour (or Onthakarn in Thai), another story of adolescent misadventure, and also with gay elements. The director is Anucha Boonyawatana, a long-haired filmmaker known for his candidly sensual short films. In his first feature-length film, Anucha cites David Lynch as his main influence, and The Blue Hour is a genre-mixing trip into horror, drama and romance, the story of a socially alienated boy who meets another stranger at a deserted swimming pool.
"Actually, the title The Blue Hour came from a Guerlin perfume from the 1910s," said Anucha, 34, who also started-up a perfumerie. "It's a smell that blends melancholy and happiness, and I like the idea that this film is perched between what's real and what's not, what's good and what's bad, between night and day."
Boy kisses boy, a ghost that wants to take them away, scenes of claustrophobic sexual intimacy — The Blue Hour seems like an envelope-pusher, though its heart is also tender. The film is in fact made as part of the TV series Puen Hien Rongrian Lon (Haunted Schools), made for GTH On Air cable channel; the Berlin premiere is a longer (and more explicit) cut before the shorter one goes on air. Release date of the film will be confirmed later.
Lastly, Berlin will screen So Be It (or A-Wang), by Kongdej Jaturanrasmee. The documentary follows two preadolescent boys who've joined a novice-monk summer camp. After leaving the programme, one boy grows attached to the monastic lifestyle, while the other returns to his difficult life as a migrant worker's son. The subject of Buddhism as a benign social force that shapes the life of young people is explored here, with Kongdej attempting a potent mix of humour, irony and heartfelt children's drama. The film, which was funded by TrueVisions, didn't make much money when it was released at House RCA last year.
So Be It.
The Blue Hour.
