Barcelona Dispatch. 5.

A few days ago, I remarked that Midnight, My Love is Thailand's own Lost in Translation. Well, it is, nearly, but not entirely. Because this romantic drama by Kongdej Jaturanrasamee is like nothing else you've seen before - and that's not a compliment. Presented in the Official Section at BAFF yesterday, this impossibly messed up artifact follows the relationship between Sombat, a middle-aged taxi driver working the night shift in Bangkok, and Nual, a young and pretty massage girl looking for someone to care for her. Up to this point, everything seems perfectly normal, and the comparison with Lost in Translation is somewhat logical.

But then comes the shock, the flash-back, a revelation which draws vengeful and nasty lines through the beautifully lonesome story. The logical and rational response to this late development in Midnight, My Love seems to be laughter - the awkwardness was palpable in the audience when the action moved to a dreamlike spaceship with a Lynchian secondary character playing Destiny (or something) with poor Sombat. The movie still packs a few surprises - there's not a single "The End" here, but a lot of them, and all of them look forced, futile, never coming off the way they're evidently intended to. The final result is a whimsical razzmatazz of Western influences without any true interest.

Presented in the Asian Selection, a non-competitive section, Shinji Aoyama's Eli, Eli, Lema, Sabachthani? is also like nothing you've seen before, but in a positive sense. Indeed, it could be the most stunning film projected at BAFF so far, a powerful defense of sensorial cinema. It's publicized as sci-fi but it truly doesn't belong to a particular genre, just to one of its own. The plot? Well, there's one, though it's not really the point. In 2015 AD, a virus has spread over the world, a sad disease which first invokes fear and despair and then suicidal instincts. The media calls the disease the "Lemming Syndrome," and its only cure seems in the hands of a duo of experimental musicians who look like they've come straight from the Acid Mothers Temple collective. They save people by making a beautiful noise.

The idea is naïve and also powerful, especially because it comes wrapped up in a dreamlike series of images which remind us that cinema doesn't always have to run through the same set of rules, the roads we all know. It's a film made of image, but also of sound, whose main intention is not to tell a story in classic terms, but to search for innovative languages to revitalise the deepest emotions. The epidemic of the sci-fi plot is real - as is our actual epidemic of the boredom, conformity and fear surrounding people and the arts. The only solution to this is noise. If Eli, Eli, Lema, Sabachhtani? were to be summed up in two words, a somehow difficult task, to tell you the truth, they could only be: "Wake up." I'm still dreaming with it.

Posted by dwhudson at May 3, 2006 12:13 PM