Pen-ek Ratanaruang's movies -- eight of them in the past 20 years and the ninth slated for a Feb 1 release -- are often inhabited by unhappy women and clumsy hitmen. Unhappy, yet those women are neither resigned nor passive. Clumsy, yet those hitmen have aspirations, dreams and worries like people in other respectable professions. A genre geek, Pen-ek likes crime thrillers, but one of Thailand's best-known directors is also a diligent investigator of human relationships and man-woman dynamics, their eccentric and mysterious rapport and misunderstandings that determine the course of the world, and of cinema.
In his new film Samui Song, Chermarn Boonyasak plays an unhappy woman married to a foreigner, who's a devout follower of a faux-Buddhist cult. David Asavanond, rugged and charismatic, plays a clumsy hitman who has to care for his ill mother while plotting his next assassination job. It's Pen-ek's first feature film in five years, and one that his fans, in Thailand and elsewhere, have been eagerly awaited.
Monrak Transistor (2001).
This month Pen-ek has juggled a supremely busy schedule of screenings, lectures, interviews and PR engagements. Tonight, he will open a retrospective of his films at Alliance Francaise, with the screening continuing for a week. Tomorrow, he will be at Jam Factory, where his feature films as well as shorts and other works will be screened outdoor in a festive setting. Then on the last weekend of January, he will have another retrospective at House RCA.
Pen-ek's first film, Fun Bar Karaoke -- about a bumbling hitman and a woman who has a strange dream -- was released in 1997, and together with other Thai New Wave filmmakers of the late 1990s, it ushered in a new era of Thai cinema. In 1999 he followed up with 6ixtynin9, in which Lalita Panyopas plays a woman who's laid off after the financial crisis and late gets involved with heist money.
Two years later, he made Monrak Transistor, an adaptation of Wat Walayangkul's novel about a country singer and his lovelorn wife. In 2003, he made Last Life In The Universe, still a landmark of onscreen loneliness, in which a Japanese librarian and a Thai woman hide from a yakuza at a beach house. He followed up with Invisible Waves in 2006, a strange (too strange?) misadventure of a Japanese gang member in Macau and Phuket.
Ploy (2007).
His best relationship film is Ploy: An unhappily married woman and her husband confront their marital crisis after the appearance of young girl, played by Apinya Sakulcharoensuk in her breakout role. Then it was Nymph in 2009, another marital drama set in the mould of supernatural thriller. His last feature film was Headshot in 2011, in which a cop-turned-hitman is on the run after a job gone wrong.
Here Pen-ek talks to us about his films, his actresses, his hitmen, his cinema heroes and about 20 years of filmmaking.
On your actresses: How did you cast 'your women'? Why are they all so unhappy?
Usually the casting director casts several choices for me because of my near-zero knowledge about actresses. We look at the casting tape together then discuss them one by one. We make our choice and I usually let it sit for a week. Then I would revisit the casting tape of the actress we have chosen again to see if she still holds my attention. Then we make a call to them and ask them out for coffee to chat. I would observe how they hold the cup, what sort of coffee they order, how they laugh, how they deal with the wind blowing their hair into their faces, etc. This is better than looking at their screen tests because in screen tests everyone always looks so stupid.
But there are exceptions. In the case of big name actresses like Lalita [Ploy] or Chermran [Samui Song], they don't do screen tests. You choose them because you're supposed to know their work already. In those cases, I just ask them out for a chat. Or sometimes they would ask me out for a chat, as Chermarn did, and we would observe each other.
Apinya [Ploy] was so outstanding on the casting tape that I didn't even look at the other candidates and I didn't even ask her out for coffee. I just prayed that she would be as good on set with 50 people around as when she was alone with my casting director when they made the tape. And she was brilliant all the way through. It was one of the happiest times of my life working with Ploy.
I've always been fascinated by women and learned a lot from them throughout my adult life. I love looking at them, smoking with them, and I admire them, so I just usually go with my instinct when casting for interesting women. I cast women who are interesting to me and hope they will be interesting to my audience too.
As to why they were all so unhappy, it may be because I have yet to see a totally happy woman. Unhappy women are more mysterious. And unhappy people make more interesting movie characters than happy people anyway.
On your hitmen: Why are they not very competent?
Hitmen are unhappy people. They make interesting movie characters especially if they are a bit incompetent. I've always been fascinated by crime news and stories so the characters of hitmen and gang bosses come naturally to me when I write. But I never like the two-dimensional hitman where you only see them kill people. I would like the audience to see their lives when they are not killing people as well. They have dreams, hopes and families to take care of just like us. And the fact that they were not always successful in their job is because most people are not always successful in their job whether they are bankers, politicians, filmmakers, etc. We all f**k up from time to time, right?
On Hitchcock, Melville, Bergman, and your cinematic heroes.
Last Life In The Universe (2003).
Cinema came very late to me in life. I spent most of my youth obsessed with football. It was only when I was living in New York City in my university days that I came upon a black-and-white poster with a guy wearing glasses and a hat with a very decorative number 8 1/2, and my interest in cinema was borne. I watched Fellini's 8 1/2 twice in two days. I was totally confused by the film but it never bored me. Fellini really took me into his world.
Pen-ek Ratanaruang. Photo: Kong Rithdee
Once you had tasted Fellini then everyone else followed naturally: Bergman, Godard, Truffuat, Woody Allen, Antonioni, Hitchcock, etc.
The first film of Alfred Hitchcock I saw was Rope and I was so stunned. I didn't know you could have two guys kill a friend, stuff him in a book case and serve dinner on top of it to 20 guests just to see if they could get away with it. I couldn't believe someone made a film about that. And the entire film happened in one apartment but felt totally cinematic. I was annoyed about his attempt to make the entire film feel like a one-take thing. But Rope and 8 1/2 opened my eyes to what cinema could be.
Bergman was also a revelation to me when I first discovered him. He made melodramas but they went so deep into the characters' minds that you forgot you were watching melodramas. His intellectual prowess transcended the melodramas. His films also made me realise the power of cinematography. Through the eyes of those great cameramen, they made me realise the camera could actually photograph emotions, even vague emotions. In his films, human faces became landscapes of complex emotion.
Woody Allen was the filmmaker who gave me the courage and enthusiasm to start making films years later. His obsessive approach of turning out one film a year without looking back to the previous films was enlightening. He made films about where he lived and people he knew really well. I adopted this approach when I took the plunge to make my first film, Fun Bar Karaoke.
I could go on forever but I'll stop here.
On democracy: You made a documentary Paradoxocracy chronicling Thai politics from 1932 to 2013.
Democracy, what democracy? I don't see any around here. When I find it, I'll let you know and we can talk about it.
On moviemaking, 20 years later.
I can't believe it's been 20 years. It feels like I just started last year. I'm still making lots of mistakes and bad decisions and still learning and growing with every film. The happiness of starting a new film and going on the adventure is still as addictive as ever, but, at my age, I must admit that the energy and enthusiasm have now diminished greatly. I hope I lose interest in filmmaking before it loses interest in me. It would be sad if, one day, I still want to make films but what I do is no longer relevant to the audience, because in the end film is still an audience business. I feel quite lucky and grateful that after 20 years, people still care about what I do.
Pen-ek Ratanaruang's films will be shown at Alliance Francaise and Jam Factory this weekend, go to afthailande.org/en/cinema-agenda and Facebook: The Jam Factory. And at House RCA on Jan 27 and 28, go to Facebook: House RCA.
