Film review: Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives

Published on Sunday 21 November 2010 14:52

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (12A) Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul Running time: 114 minutes ***

WHAT'S in a name? If it's Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, it sounds like something that scores highly in Scrabble. He may not be familiar to mainstream crowds, but among arthouse audiences his reputation is built on zen-like, free-floating experimental fusions of serene oddness.

Shot with amateur actors, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the Palme D'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Uncle Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) is a tamarind farmer dying from liver failure, who opts to spend his last days in the Thai countryside, surrounded by his loved ones. Thanks to an apparent open-door relationship between the living and the dead, special guests pay their respects, including the ghost of his late wife (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk) and his long-lost son (Geerasak Kulhong), who returns home in a non-human form – that of an yeti-like animal with red eyes – after running into the jungle and mating with a monkey ghost.

"Am I the only one who feels odd here?" asks Boonmee's bewildered nephew. Absolutely not. Clearly this is not the average multiplex stuff, and even its biggest fans may scratch their heads as to its meaning after sitting through a mix of animal myths, digressive visits to village folklore, and symbolic musings about the parallel worlds of life and afterlife.

Although Uncle Boonmee can recall his past lives, the film is pretty vague as to what they were. Maybe he was once a lost buffalo, or a monk. Or a talking catfish who engages in some sexplay with a princess, in what may be the least erotic cross-species sex since Splice. Even if you approach this long, engimatic, rapturous meditation with an open mind, at times Uncle Boonmee runs perilously close to resembling a big buddhist version of Where's Wally.

If you enjoy being lost in gorgeously cluttered images, this slight film has a certain hypnotic pace but the nuances of the references to Thailand's military past and the relationship between Bangkok and rural dwellers are too allusive for western audiences. The symbolism is so opaque and Weerasethakul's emphasis so languid that it's hard to see what he's getting at.

Selected release including Filmhouse, Edinburgh, from Friday