In the universe of Thai romantic comedy, Rak Ngo Ngo (literally "stupid love", although the official English title is Love Syndrome) is one of the brighter stars _ not the brightest, mind you, but bright enough to deliver the required dose of laughter and, perhaps, cause the sentimental to squeeze out a few tears. Penned by a team of talented young writers and directed by Pantham Thongsang, this is another progeny of the Love Actually-inspired family of loosely entangled tales of the heart (four in this film), criss-crossing many demographics and sexualities. But while Love Syndrome sticks to stock twists and choreographed romantic button-pushing (kneeling to propose, dramatic confessions via big songs), it does manage to rise above the formula at the right moment and also comes armed with a healthy supply of irony.
Rak Ngo Ngo (Love Syndrome)
Starring Keerati Mahaprukpong, Pakin Kamwilaisak and Thitirat Rojsangrat. Directed by Pantham Thongsang. In Thai (with subtitles only at selected cinemas).
While lacking a real centrifuge, this cute little machine consists of four parts. A university student and theatre director who thinks she's too cool, too intellectual, too post-modern to fall in love falls in love with an actor from one of her plays; a young man, an older friend of the college girl, endures a painful push-and-pull relationship with his ex who has just returned from abroad; a nerdy, dreamy woman in a direct-sales firm develops complex feelings towards a handsome co-worker of hers, who's probably gay; and a high school boy who harbours a huge crush for a friend of his, a loud-mouthed lesbian and judo expert who goes through a series of girlfriends.
As is typical in this kind of structure, some of the stories work better than others. The episode about the direct-sales woman (played by Thitirat Rojsangrat, the best in the bunch) comes across as the most accomplished, with the right sweet-and-sour emotional mix and, surprisingly, with a mature conclusion about the vast possibilities of love _ unrequited love, that is. In the section about the theatre director (played by Keerati Mahaprukpong), the screenwriter enjoys the opportunity to reference a classic Thai film (Puen Pang) as well as to toy with the college-romance routine, helped at one point by a red phallic sculpture.
While Love Syndrome has weak parts and underwritten characters, its strength lies in how the script both acknowledges the inevitability of genre elements and at the same time treats them in a teasing fashion. The film is very aware that it'll be categorised under that rather tired genre, the romantic comedy, and so it sets out to tread that well-trodden path while throwing the odd knowing wink or two in our direction. And that is indeed a rare quality in Thai cinema.
Love is stupid, the film suggests, otherwise it's not love. Luckily, stupid is not what this film is.
James Wan's rise to grip the spooky baton once wielded by John Carpenter, Sam Raimi, Hammer Studio and (why not?) Dario Argento and bring back the golden age of horror is by no means assured. Two months ago, Wan, a Malaysian-born filmmaker, released the chilly, skilfully crafted The Conjuring and now he brings us Insidious: Chapter 2, a fairly creepy though much less sublime sequel in which he resorts to a catalogue of obvious scare tactics, assaulting sound cues and several in-your-face encounters with malevolent spirits bent on child abduction. This film is more about shock, while the its predecessor was about menace. It's also quite funny, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.
It would help a little if you can recall the first Insidious, at the end of which Josh (Patrick Wilson) transports himself into the spiritual realm to bring back his son, lured over to the dark side by a ghost, or something of the sort.
When Josh returns to this side, however, he's not really himself: something from that gaping maw of darkness has attached itself to him. The terror that his family has endured in the first film returns here in full force, spearheaded by a mysterious phantom in a Victorian lace gown. Paranormal investigators, shamans and mediums are called in to help, and it turns out that Josh _ not very surprisingly _ is transforming himself into the Jack Nicholson character from The Shining, a mortal threat to his own family as a result of demonic possession.
Wan is a master of timing, and his intuition on where to place the camera is outstanding. But this time around the whole thing seems a little forced, and the unabashedly old-school fright elements _ a platoon of dead people coming out of a wardrobe, or the bloodied grimace of the Victorian banshee _ elicit snickers as well as screams. If you're a fan of horror (or of Wan), Insidious 2 is insidious enough, with its heavily made-up carnival of souls. But in a month where we've been treated to such satisfying offerings as Gravity, Rush and Prisoners, this trashy ghost yarn inevitably comes across as slight and rather routine.
