36 ***
Dir: Nawapol
Thamrongrattanarit. With: Vajrasthira Koramit, Wanlop Rungkamjad. Cert: NC. 68
mins
Thai writer-director
Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit here presents us with three-dozen single shots,
lasting two or three minutes apiece; operating rather like a slo-mo flicker
book, these come to track several years in the life of a location scout with
her own tendency towards photo-hoarding. Formally, it’s not so far from
Kiarostami’s Five and Ten, or its producer Aditya Assarat’s
blissful Hi-So, which cast a similar
spell with the same basic ingredients: image as memory, people wandering among
symbolic rubble. Thamrongrattanarit works hard on this exercise, eliciting wry
chuckles from one character’s frustrated attempts to retrieve his email
password, and palpable poignancy when another dies, leaving those left behind
with only images like these – becalmed moments, suspended in time – to remember
them by. Succumb to its peaceable rhythms, and it adds up to a distinctive if
slight experience – an object lesson in what can be achieved without recourse
to frenetic cutting or camera-twirling.
36 opens in selected cinemas from today.
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