re:mote voices

Title: The Last Life In The Universe

Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Sinitta Boonyasak, Laila Boonyasak, Yutaka Matsushige

Director: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang

This is a considerably curious film, not being quite what I expected at all, even if I couldn’t readily pin point what it was I expected. I guess having read a couple of descriptions which were quite different from each other probably didn’t help, for all that they did serve to get me interested in the first place.

Kenji is a Japanese man in Bangkok, who reminds of Wilbur in the Danish film set in Glasgow called Wilbur (Wants To Kill Himself) – especially as we have one of the opening scenes with Kenji preparing to hang himself, only to be interrupted by an unexpected visit from his brother. Working in a library he sees a young Thai girl, who we find out is called Nid – she is dressed in a Japanese school girl’s uniform, which is part of the outfit she wears in a club for Japanese men she works in, an outfit rounded out by Playboy bunny style ears. She attracts Kenji’s attention, but disappears before he can find out anything about her.

Having failed to hang himself Kenji plays with the idea of throwing himself from a bridge. But instead of killing himself, he is instead on the scene to witness Nid’s death. As is her sister Noi.

From this event Kenji and Noi end up talking, and having dinner together. Driven by his brother’s problems with the Yakuza, Kenji is reluctant to go back to his flat. So pretty much he moves in with Noi, much to her confusion, as he doesn’t explain his reasons.

The two characters are in many ways opposites, Kenji is fastidiously clean and tidy – his flat has everything precisely lined up and labelled – in the meantime Noi’s flat looks like a bomb site – with dirty dishes, clothes, and everything else just scattered everywhere. For this section of the film, the narrative takes on something of an aimlessness – the characters floating around each other, Kenji cleaning here and there, while Noi tries to discourage him, and not much else happens.

However as this continues there are some odd moments which creep into the film. Where things flip from one reality to another, at one point in a manner which the characters acknowledge, and another where the behaviour is as though nothing has happened at all. This is actually where the film is at it’s most striking, even if it does lend towards the ambiguity and perhaps lack of satisfaction that makes up the end.

Just as the first part had more going on, so does the conclusion, with the continuing parallels between the two characters life, as they both come to decisions at the same time as the problems they have been hiding from make themselves known. The resolution of this last part is where the third dose of weirdness comes, and as I’ve said it leaves you with a kind of funny feeling about the conclusion.

The two leads that take the parts of Kenji and Noi give strong performances – particularly as they work around the different cultural aspects of the characters. A Japanese man who speaks little Thai with a Thai woman who speaks a little Japanese, with both speaking some English, so that the characters switch between the three languages in their attempts to keep up with each other.

The cast also includes a cameo by the Japanese director Miike Takashi, which is foreshadowed by a close up on the poster for his film Ichi The Killer – additionally the henchmen accompanying Takashi’s Yakuza killer are also familiar, one of whom was in the horror Ju-on, the other in Takashi’s Gozu – both having also shown in recent weeks. While the crew includes Chris Doyle as cinematographer, who was responsible for the same role on Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together.