Like teen spirit

Like teen spirit

Parkpoom Wongpoom's film Homestay takes the viewer along on a mysterious investigation

SOCIAL & LIFESTYLE
Like teen spirit
Teeradon Supapunpinyo in Homestay.

Parkpoom Wongpoom had a hand in one of the best-known Thai horror stories of all time. In 2004, Parkpoom (with his friend and co-director Banjong Pisanthanakun) scored a phenomenon with Shutter, a ghost film about a begrudging female spirit that hounds the men who've wronged her, which went on to become a huge hit around the world (eventually spawning an insipid Hollywood remake).

In his latest film, Homestay, Parkpoom, now going solo, ventures into the supernatural, though this time the afterlife has taken a slightly brighter turn.

In this most anticipated film of the month, a fortunate soul is gifted with a second chance at life by entering the body of a recently deceased teenage boy named Min -- a temporary vessel, or homestay. The spirit has 100 days to navigate this new life and find out what caused Min's death.

Homestay is an adaptation from the popular 2007 Japanese novel Colourful by Eto Mori, which has a strong following throughout Asia. Mori's story has previously found life in the form of a novel and an animated film. It took the studio GDH almost eight years to secure the rights to adapt Colourful into Homestay.

What the director found most challenging was to retain the heart of the original story in the context of a Thai setting, and to balance out the original ideas and new imaginations.

"But after a while, it's not about the book anymore," Parkpoom said. "So I dropped the concern and focused rather on how to make an entertaining film for the audience. We still respect the heart of the story, but we're not going to try keeping all the minute details."

During our conversation, Parkpoom often mentioned "the heart" of the story, though he kept his lips sealed on what it really is.

"It would spoil the film," he said. But he did reveal some essence of the story, which sounds very much like a Buddhist teaching.

"Homestay is a story about life. The eternal truth. It's dhamma. It may sound cliché but it's about people's attachment to things. When we think of everything as permanence, we'll hold on to it. But if we only view it as temporary, we can drop so many problems and live life easier and happier. Life is just like a homestay we've come upon. It's temporary and one day we'll leave it."

His rendition of the eternal truth is also packed with CGI: raindrops falling upward and a character walking on the side of a building, a nod at Christopher Nolan's Inception.

"I've had many sleepless nights over that," said the director with a laugh, referring to his time with the green screen. "We want to make it great, to move people's attitude forward regarding made-in-Thailand CGI, which people often criticise as poor in quality. The solution is not to quit, but to improve on it, even if it's just by a millimetre. It's not a big leap. But if it's anything forward, we're satisfied."

Another aspect that helped shape the film is the cast, which the director has called his "dream team". We talked a lot about his young cast members: Teeradon Supapunpinyo, playing Min/the spirit, and Cherprang Areekul of the girl group BNK48 (see main story). "He has a lot of ambition," said Parkpoom about his leading man. "People are used to seeing him as a playboy and an overall sneaky guy in his previous roles, but never as a lead himself. And I like that he wants to be more than what and who he is now. I like working with people who aspire and determine to go where they haven't gone before. He's got a great spirit."

A person who is harder to work with is actually Cherprang, who has had zero acting experience. The idol was cast even before BNK48's hit Fortune Cookie took over the country earlier this year.

"She had something that held your attention [even back then]. Perhaps it's something about her eyes. And it grew on me -- on my instinct -- that she's the right person for the role, even before I saw any good acting. The producer was even hesitant if she'd be able to act."

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