Samui Song Directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Samui Song
Director: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Cast: David Asavanond, Chermarn Boonyasak, Vithaya Pansringarm, Stephane Sednaoui
Year: 2017
Provenance: Thailand
Author Review: Roberto Matteucci
"Here we are confined to the parking."
Ko Samui is a beautiful island in southern Thailand. Over time it has transformed, from a forest to many hours of boat travel, into a paradise for tourists.
If I had to run away from everything and everyone it would be the ideal place to hide, to enjoy the peace of the life: to pass from home to the beach.
The same must have thought the Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang in the film Samui Song presented at the 74th Venice International Film Festival: "Samui is like heaven for the main female character. It's the only place where she can be free and happy." (1)
In a road, out of town, an accident happens, the camera makes a tracking shot, everything is black and white. The colour returns and a wounded girl appears, lost in a forest with a dog. Black detachment; we are in a hospital.
The woman with an ecchymosis is approached by a man; he is a person with many problems, he tries to survive, to live day by day, with little money. He has a strong pain, it is his mother, she suffers from Alzheimer's, but he can not afford to buy the necessary medicines: "you have to pay before having the recipe."
The beginning has the intense and decisive characteristics of a thriller. Besides, it has a social human story and the director finds a solution through a mystery: "It's my first full-length film since Headshot in 2011. It's a thriller with some intense drama. There are not many action scenes, but it involves crime and murder, I know it's definitely exciting." (2)
The Thai director refers to Hitchcock - "Using Hitchcock as a starting point" (3) - to confirm his compelling plot, with dominant characters who can capture the scene without limitations, included the natural explanation.
And the two characters could be perfect for a Hitchcock movie.
Viyada is a charming Thai actress. She is married to Jerome a French artist, a millionaire, with difficult character hidden by a cordial attitude. The director shows him as impotent and wanker.
They live in a beautiful house outside the town.
The couple reveals serious fractures, many obscurities, the most serious fault is the obsession with a religious sect frequented by Jerome. Viyada in a first moment participates in the meetings but then turns away with disgust.
The couple does not work, there are violent scenes, and the woman has only one way to get rid of both her husband and the cruel guru. Only a stranger can help her.
The story is full of suspense, plot twists, with a work in progress at in every phase of the film. The movie ends. But the director could, without any problem, resume and modify the linearity of the narration.
Despite the sophistication of the crime story, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang is able to tell a modern social story. A marriage between two people from different cultures, the intrusion of new religious cults even into a conservative society like Thailand. A setting between the nascent and rich Thai middle class; and when a social class grows rapidly, it produces also so many toxic behaviours.
For this reason, in order to reach a solution, Viyada must defend herself against another serious problem in Thai society (and in many other countries): the condition of women. For the director:
"I felt every Thai woman had to be, more or less, an actress to survive. Women in our society have many roles in their counterparts - as a daughter, a girlfriend, a wife, a mother, an employee. And I feel like I've been playing different roles (usually helpless and submissive) to get in our evil-dominant world. " (4)
From this thought comes the multiplication of parts. The woman has defensive/offensive behaviour; as an actress has to play many roles. Heaven exists: it is in Samui but also there the past can comes back harmful.
The editing is complex, there are many temporal and physical disconnections, a repetition of the scenes resulting from different subjective. The music is as strong as in the episode of the assassination when a music non-diegetic determines and characterizes the sense of the episode.
The director does not save himself. Above all, he is cynical towards the French husband. Impotent tries to masturbate watching a porn film on TV. But he can not, the penis - as accused by his wife - is minuscule and always limp. This miserable conduct ends with a self-punishment, strikes in the face and in the testicles for the shameful sexual inability. The retaliation will arrive with his sentence, ironically from a great and rigid statue of a penis.
The director confesses: "A lot of people say that my movies are weird and not that easy to understand". (5) The plot maintains many levels, which may be difficult to perceive, but it is only a style, it is a philosophy.
We have some hermetic moments: the sick mother finds herself awake and active driving a car. Because the ill woman is another type of femininity, the weaker one, an outcast of society impossible to cure due to lack of money. As the son says there is an advantage in being ill with Alzheimer's "at least you forget all the other diseases".
The hope arrives. It comes from Samui, perhaps women can succeed without needing anyone, just eliminate the toxic residues of so many violent men.
(1) https://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-entertainment/1401754/south-of-heaven
(2) https://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-entertainment/1401754/south-of-heaven
(5) https://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-entertainment/1401754/south-of-heaven
