Onthakan (Thai) [The Blue Hour]

The biggest problem with these kind of films is that you need to really spend time in trying to understand what the film director was really trying to say. Its definitely not in-your-face very clear story. In fact, you need to watch every scene very carefully to totally understand whats real and what maybe unreal. I have personally always struggled on what do I exactly feel about such films. You dislike it after the first viewing but then you discuss with friends, read posts online trying to decipher the film and then 2 days later, you feel, “OMG! That was brilliant storytelling!”. But was it really? If you had to spend so much time just understanding the film; was it really a brilliant piece of work?

Tam is gay and is bullied in school. His family also disapproves of him and constantly accuse him of anything that goes wrong in the house including anything stolen. Tam meets a much confident Phum at a deserted pool area. The two are looking for mutual physical satisfaction. Initially Tam is scared but the two form a connect, since Phum is the only real connect Tam has outside the bulling classmates and a hateful family. Phum informs Tam that the pool area is haunted. One day Phum takes Tam to a garbage dump on land that Phum says his family owns and that still could provide them a fortune. But Tam soon sees corpses and bodies laying around. This is when film moves to a darker territory. All kinds of images and scenes start appearing and in random places that as a viewer it becomes hard to place what’s real v/s what is really imagination of Tam’s psyche. This hide and seek game continues with Tam’s and Phum’s being together and Tam ultimately finds his whole family killed.

As I mentioned above, it is hard to understand what really went on in the film. If I had to interpret, I would say that Phum was Tam’s figment of imaginations. Phum was Tam’s stronger self, who gave him courage to fight odds. Or maybe Phum was a ghost who possesses Tam to get him out of his unhappy misery. There were a few scenes where we see them together and also Tam alone, which gave me that idea. Also, otherwise what would have been the point of Phum telling him that the swimming pool area was haunted. I dont know if others felt that way, but even the voice and tonal quality of both the characters was quite similar. You couldn’t differentiate one from the other. Film is shot creepily with dark undertones there by giving it a feeling of psycho/supernatural drama. The 2 boys look cute and act quite well but still the pacing of this film is really slow and could have been amped up a bit.

Still not very sure, what was the exact messaging behind this film. Does repression generate anger, do troubled souls find a way to connect to one another? We will not know. But this film IMO is strictly a timepass fare. Maybe, I still haven’t graduated to a phase where I can start admiring and appreciating the “different” cinema. (4/10)