Not that many Thai movies make it to the US. The ones made so far during this millennium that I have seen have (with the exception of Beautiful Boxer) have been mysterious to the point of opacity (Tropical Malady, Mysterious Object at Noon, both directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul). "Ruang rak noi nid mahasa" (Last Life in the Universe, 2003), cowritten by Thai novelist Prabda Yoon and Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and directed by Ratanaruang, has an ambiguous ending and the whole film is open to several interpretations. It is, however, considerably less mysterious if one knows that for Japanese, elaborate tattoos covering the whole back signal "yakusa" (gangster) and that fictive kinship is common in yakusa gangs.

I don't think that there is anything in particular about Thai culture that is similarly crucial. The spirit house in the yard is just there, without being involved in the plot.

Perhaps there are allusions to other Thai films that I missed. I don't think the ones to Japanese ones are at all crucial, only amusing (the leader of a gang of assassins being played by Japanese director by Takashi Miike, whose 2001 film "Ichi, The Killer" starred the male lead of "Last Life," Asano Tadanobu (as Kenji), and the poster for "Ichi" in the Japan Foundation's Bangkok library at which Asano's character works, and the prolonged shot that is used on the cover seems to me an homage to Shinoda Masahiro's "Double Suicide").

"Last Life in the Universe" struck me as a kind of orphaned love child of Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Buñuel, and Wong Karwai--the latter being sufficiently influenced by Antonioni that he might be considered a brother, rather than a parent. Wong's usual cinematographer, Christopher Doyle (who also shot Zhang Yimou's "Hero," as well as "Infernal Affairs," "The Quiet American," et al. ) was borrowed by Ratanaruang, and restrained from his usual super-saturated colors, though not from many an arty camera angle.

The film opens in Kenji's obsessively tidy, book-filled, and meticulously ordered Bangkok apartment, as he is in the process of hanging himself. This suicide attempt--and a number of subsequent ones--is interrupted. Kenji's attempts at suicide are like the attempts by the protagonist of Simon Gray's play "Otherwise Engaged" to listen to "Parsifal": always interrupted.

The first one is interrupted by the very insistent doorbell-ringing of Yukio (Yutaka Matsushige), his brother (or "brother"), coming to stay with a six-pack of Heineken's, shoes, and a present in a box.

We know from our tour of the apartment (very Antonioniesque), that Kenji dresses exclusively in gray (and has a different pair of black shoes for each weekday and sneakers for the weekend). He is very diffident at work, and as meticulous about shelving books in the Japanese library as he is in arranging his possessions at home.

Through a shelf, he glimpses an attractive Thai woman, whom we will later learn is named Noi and is learning Japanese in preparation for taking a job in Osaka, which is where Kenji is from.

Noi and her sister Nid (played by real-life sisters Sinitta and Laila Boonyasak) both work fulfilling fantasies of Japanese visitors. We do not see what they do, though Nid wears the uniform of a Japanese schoolgirl and Noi has visible bruises.

Nid has gotten it on with Noi's caddish gangster boyfriend (Thiti Rhumorn). Driving across a bridge, they spot what looks like him, but is Kenji up on the railing thinking about jumping. Rushing across the roadway, Nid is struck by a car. Sudden death also finds Kenji's brother, which sets up Kenji spending time with Noi first in the hospital then at her extremely unkempt beach front house (on the outskirts of Pattaya). He undertakes cleaning up the house, even though she is going to leave it for Japan in a few days. More violence finds both of them, there is a bit of CGI magic, and the less-than-transparent ending that I already mentioned.

There is definitely a neo-noir plot, though it occurs in brief flashes. A very offbeat love story between two characters, both of whom were psychologically damaged even before the trauma of seeing a sibling die. Not just in the contrast between the pathological neatness of Kenji's living space and the incredible mess, with dirty dishes and trash everywhere, of Noi's, this is a very odd couple. Among other ways, he speaks very little Thai, she speaks very little Japanese, and their lingua franca is halting English. (Through the first half of the film, the English is not subtitled. It is also not very audible, and at first I thought was unsubtitled Japanese. In the last half, the English is subtitled, for which I am grateful.)

There are some Buñuelesque jolts of black humor (and the CGI magic seems an homage to "That Obscure Object of Desire"), but the painfully alienated main characters and the observation of things kept bringing Antonioni and Wong to mind. Ratanaruang seems to me to be like them in being more interested in visual compositions than in plot or character (though there is more plot than in the movies of either of them). Ratanaruang presumably set the pace, and the look owes much to him as well as to Doyle, master cinematographer that Doyle undeniably is.

The melancholic musical score supplied by music by Small Room and Hualampong Riddim works very well and deserves being singled out for praise, along with the leads, and the look.

Wong's "In the Mood for Love" and "2046" both recall the character played by Tony Leung having an involvement in Southeast Asia. The diffidence of Kenji also strikes me as similar to Leung's, and the invasion of space in "Last Life in the Universe" recalls to me Wong's "Chungking Express" and "2046." Perhaps I will find confirmation for these links when I get the DVD, which has lengthy bonus features. (I watched it from a Netflix feed.) And the particular alienation in an alien land brings to mind Sophia Coppola's very overrated "Lost in Translation," made in the same year and IMO far inferior to "Last Life in the Universe."


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© 2007, Stephen O. Murray



Recommended:
Yes