The Memories (Cambodia Mini-Series)

This low budget BL series comes from the small indie company OxygenZ Station from Cambodia, a country not traditionally known to bring in many BL series. This is a hapless story of a young man named Phano who is anchored in the knowledge that he is gay but is tormented and discriminated against because of it. The series is only 4 episodes, where the first three episodes are 35-45 minutes long while the last episode is only 20 minutes.

Phano is a young boy, who discovers that his boyfriend Toy has been double crossing him and has also been secretly dating a girl. When Phano confronts him, he insults him saying that no one would ever wanna love such a femme gay guy and that he has been using him only for fun. The same day he finds out that he did not get a job and that his final assignment in college was also rejected. Thinking of this as the worse day ever, dejected and heart broken he goes and sits in a cafe, where a new barista guy Prince takes pity on him and befriends him by giving him warm milk. As days go by, Phano spends more time at the coffee shop and a friendship of sort starts to develop between Prince and Phano. Alongwith his best girlfriend Cake, Phano doesn't have many friends to speak of. His classmates bully Phano and on certain occasions Prince helps him out. In one particularly difficult moment when Prince helps Phano see Toy’s real toxicity and abuse towards him, the relationship shifts even more. They understand each other now even more deeply than they both realized. But Prince hasn't told Phano much about him. One day he suddenly is gone and Phano has np idea what happened. No good-bye. No parting words. Nothing. Just emptiness. Why? He continues to look for him only to find him in a different city with a girl. 

As it turns out Prince probably was always straight but also very kind and gentle to Phano who happened to be gay , but Prince never judged anyone by their sexuality. At least that's my read of this mini-series. As a character Prince is strong and a true friend. He was always there to remind Phano of his inner strengths and to push on and not let the bullies and abusers win out. And thanks to the country being not very open to homosexuality, Phano would go through various emotions like anger, frustration, heartache, bitterness on multiple occasions. Phano was a character who could have easily been an object of pity or consumed by bitterness, but they never made him that. He always had, even in his lowest point, a sense of dignity and grace as to who he was, and he was determined not to be beaten down. The ending was particularly interesting. An age old story of a gay boy falling for his straight friend. The story of the show was good and so was the direction, but a lot of scenes feel stretched and the editing could have been crispier. Also quite a few scenes are shot in dark and sometimes it became hard to really get an idea of what's happening.

This is a simple, no frills, BL mini-series focused on one individual who finds another individual at vulnerable times in each other’s lives. Unfortunately, their paths are not destined to intersect; only run parallel to each other. I am rating it high, just so that we can encourage more makers to bring us more facets of BL from this country. (6/10)