What begins as comedy sometimes ends as horror. Or maybe: What begins as comedy sometimes ends as tragicomedy. Last Saturday, writer-director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke presented Pee Chai Dai Kha (A Useful Ghost) at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, the sole Thai title in the festival.
Zany, offbeat, nutty, quirky, wacky: international critics exhausted the vocabulary of that register to describe this comedy. For us Thais, allow me to invoke the privilege of our common tongue and describe it, proudly, unapologetically, as baa baa bor bor kha! (don't skip the final particle kha).
This is a compliment, of course. A Useful Ghost feels like a very original film that came out of our cinematic tradition -- the ghost film, the comedy -- filtered through the mind of a filmmaker keenly aware of the cinephilic currents of world cinema. The pitch is a winner: The ghost of a dead wife returns to her husband by possessing a vacuum cleaner, and when the husband's family disapproves of the unholy reunion, the ghost-wife -- inside the poltergeist hoover -- must prove her usefulness to them, and not just by sucking dirt off the floor.
The sheer nonsense of the plot is a ploy. Ratchapoom wants his film to be both "silly and serious", since his goal is not just to pull off an eccentric romantic comedy but also to make a political satire of the ghost of Thailand past. For all its bizarre setup, irrelevant humour and queer joy worthy of Joao Pedro Rodriguez, A Useful Ghost is a commentary on the state of contemporary Thailand, from the scourge of PM2.5 to political disappearances and labour abuse. "The ideal audience for this film," he told me, "is the Thai people."
And yet here we are, at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, where the film had its premiere in the Critics' Week, a section reserved for promising first and second feature films. Ratchapoom and his actors, Davika Hoorne (playing Nat, the ghost-wife), Wisarut Himmarat (playing March, the husband), Wanlop Rungkamjad (playing Krong, the hoover repairman) and Apasiri Nitipon (playing Suman, the mother-in-law) made their appearances at the official screening at Espace Miramar last Saturday. This was the first Thai film in Cannes' Official Selection in 10 years.
Here's an excerpt of my conversation with Ratchapoom.
A Useful Ghost is about a dead wife who returns to live with her human husband. This is a familiar story -- the story of Mae Nak, Thailand's most high-profile female ghost. But your treatment of it, that this ghost is now inside a vacuum cleaner, is out of this world.
It's the idea I always used in my short films, Aninsee Daeng [a queer spy film based on the Thai character Insee Daeng], or Ma'am Anna [a take on Anna Leonowens, the American governor in Siam during the early Rattanakosin period]. I like to play with existing characters, either in pop-culture or in actual history, because audiences already know them and there's no need for any long introduction. Then I explore new possibilities on how to use them. I thought about Mae Nak when I started out, but I developed it further -- after she's returned, what happens? An image that came to me was a ghost at work. I wanted to see a ghost going to work and have a function in society, such as working in an office.
And when we cast Davika Hoorne in the lead role, the idea is even more noticeable, because she also plays Mae Nak in the film Phi Mak [the highest-grossing Thai film of all time from 2012].
The story of Mae Nak has been told over 50 times in Thai films and TV series, but that proves there's still room to explore it.
I see my film as a contemporary re-interpretation. For me, the film Phi Mak was a landmark in the lore of Mae Nak, because at the end of that film, the ghost of Mae Nak is allowed to live with her human husband because the monk approves it. The villagers are not happy seeing this ghost living among them, but when the spiritual authority allows it, then it's final. Maybe this is how Thailand works: You seek approval from phu yai -- the authorities. I think it's interesting that the film chose that angle of the story.
And why the vacuum cleaner?
It's just kooky. I mean, so the ghost comes back to the world of the living, but how can I show it? We looked for references, but Western ghosts are different, right? It's such a big issue during script development because nobody knows for sure what a ghost looks like. So, why not a vacuum cleaner? Like, let's mess with people's expectations. In ghost movies, we know a ghost is present when a faucet starts dripping, or a TV turns on by itself, or the lights begin to flicker. Electric appliances and ghosts are not strangers. Also, when you have a female ghost, a hoover also means domestic chores. There's another layer to it.
The film is much more than that though. The quirkiness opens up to something bigger like politics, thought crimes, deaths of protesters, labour exploitation. How do all the strands of the narrative come together.
My interest is in social politics, so every time I come up with an idea, no matter how small it is, I try to go further and see how I can use that idea to explain a broader context of our society. Perhaps I'm not good at telling a small story -- like, a family drama, I'm not so keen on that.
So I have these four, five characters, but together they say something about our society. Maybe later I'll have to try to write a character that doesn't have to 'signify' something or 'symbolise' a concept. That's why I use comedy to undercut what may come across as intellectual posturing. The whimsy, the wacky jokes -- it's because I don't want to pontificate. I don't want to talk about a serious matter with a serious and pompous attitude. The humour tells the audience, it's okay, you don't have to try to interpret everything and sometimes it's just a joke.
The ghosts in the film, in a sense, are manifestations of history itself. How did that come about?
There were so many drafts of the screenplay and I can't remember how the concept of ghosts had evolved. We always have Mae Nak, sure, and we have this idea about 'useful ghosts' and 'useless ghosts'. There are angry ghosts and peaceful ghosts -- this is the world I've created. During the years that I was developing the film -- 2018 onwards -- Thailand went through a lot of things. Protests, elections, political disappearances, and so on. I read a lot of academic studies on those subjects and I guess they shaped my idea bit by bit.
Let's talk about the tone and the style. The film's sense of wackiness exists in a setting of polished art direction. What was the idea behind the world the film is projecting?
I briefed the team that I wanted a film that was 'silly and serious'. I also wanted something 'elegantly perverse'. If we have all these weird things in a rough, raw setting, it's nothing special. The world in the film is tasteful, even though it's the setting for all the craziness. This contrast should give more impact to the story.
The film premiered in Cannes, how well do you think it will cross over cultural and historical barriers?
The idea of the film is universal enough, I think, and the aesthetic might keep everyone engaged. Even if you don't know much about Thailand, there's something to look at on the screen. I have this idea that my film should work like a supermarket -- you go in and you pick something from the shelf that suits you. The film premieres in Cannes, but sure, the ideal audience for it is the Thai people.
