This is Aditya Assarat’s feature film debut, and is a shining reminder that not every Thai filmmaker is innately gifted. Showing that he has a lot of developing to do before joining big shots like Weerasethakul, Ratanaruang, and Sasanatieng, Wonderful Town threatens to undo whatever progress that Weerasethakul has made in his fight to loosen the government’s censorship of Thai film and art, as Assarat has made a film as insubstantial and inoffensive, to westerners and easterners alike, as he possibly could. The plot conveniently avoids even modest representations of sexuality by crafting characters who seem too sheltered to even know that sex exists. Also, for being set in post-tsunami Pakua Pak, Thailand, the film blatantly avoids any religious questions raised by nature’s killing of tens of thousands of people, which would have strengthened the film’s relevance, but upped it’s chances of a no-no from the Thai film board. The tsunami is actually 100% in the background of the film, having as much to do with the narrative as Hurricane Katrina had to do with the events taking place in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (aside: recently and inexplicably just announced to be released to DVD by the Criterion Collection). For a filmmaker actually ready to embrace how a devastating environmental shift can affect the residents’ characters, one need only look at Jia Zhang-ke’s recent features. Imagine if Jia made a film set in a town just flooded for the Three Gorges Dam, you know, like Still Life, but that the only thing that happens in the film is a man and a woman meet each other while swimming in the flooded town, and then proceed to flirt for an hour and a half. Let alone the ignorance of the film’s most interesting environmental tidbit, the film wouldn’t be any good even if it was just set in a tsunami-less Pakua Pak, either. The main conflict of the film is that Ton and Na, who have fallen in love (despite each other’s flatlined personalities; a match made in heaven, I suppose), aren’t aloud to embrace each other’s love to their hearts’ desires because of Na’s prejudiced brother who doesn’t like outsiders. Yawn. Na can’t even force herself to hug Ton while she is working in her shift as a maid at a hotel because she’s afraid someone will see and gossip. I have no reason to believe that Ton should be crazy about Na; she is not only obnoxiously shy and hopelessly conservative.
The film’s one successful moment occurs near the end when Ton makes an emotional phone call to his father. His father had abandoned him long ago because of Ton’s interest in being a musician. Ton informs his father on the other end of the phone that he’s quit his music, before bursting into tears. It’s touching, but then the film abruptly shifts back to it’s lame plot, which wastes no time in getting worse and more manipulative by throwing in a sudden and unbelievable moment of PG-rated violence. It’s unexpected, but also unnecessary. After enduring the introspective-American-drama-inspired score for the film’s duration, Assarat makes it bluntly obviously that his goal was to make a weepy, the only possible explanation for the artificial importance placed on the tsunami.
Being aesthetically pleasing is not enough. And, trust me, this is not the only example of a Thai director not being instantly gifted. I took a whole class on Thai cinema and didn’t like a single film we watched. Granted, Tropical Malady and Last Life in the Universe weren’t out then.
Oh I’m sure. In Cannes last May I visited the Thai booth in the Marketing convention area and everything thing they were advertising looked like wannabe John Woo/Bruce Lee trash. But, when something from Thai cinema is hyped, I generally love it, which makes the general praise for this film so surprising to me.
Most of the films we watched were dreadful knockoffs of American and Hong Kong action/horror films.