Screen Picks

by Sam Adams

IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE: Tropical Malady is the only one of Weerasethakul's films to open in Philly. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Mysterious Objects: The Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thu.-Sat., March 20-22, 7 p.m., $5-$7, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 866-468-7619, ihousephilly.org) For Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a story worth telling is worth telling twice. His movies are full of bifurcations and recapitulations, stories real and imaginary, and often both at once. They are mystical and concrete, ambitious and understated, masterful and naïve.

Born in Thailand, Weerasethakul (who goes by "Joe" in the English-speaking world) studied architecture as an undergrad before getting an M.F.A. at the Art Institute of Chicago, and his movies are acutely aware of the space within the frame. But unlike Nicholas Ray, who was a practicing architect before he became a director, Weerasethakul is less interested in constructing his own spaces (like, say, the staircase at the center of Ray's Bigger Than Life) than exploring those that already exist, both indoors and out. His impeccably composed frames carve living sculptures out of the raw material of the jungles of Thailand, or the thatched interior of a village hut.

The two features in International House's four-night Weerasethakul series, Tropical Malady and Syndromes and a Century, are built around the contrasting worlds of city and country. (His first two features, Mysterious Object at Noon and Blissfully Yours, are unfortunately not part of the series, nor, more understandably, is the co-directed lark, The Adventures of Iron Pussy.) In the first half of Tropical Malady, which screens Thursday night, a sweet-faced soldier and a shy country boy engage in a tender, nearly wordless flirtation. In its second half, the story recurs as a fairy tale, with the soldier hunting a magical tiger through the jungle. As he chases the beast, his quarry is suddenly replaced by the country boy's naked form. The transition between the film's two movements is so deft and offhand, there's no sense that the second is some kind of metaphorical interpretation of the first, or that the first is a modern version of an old myth. They simply coexist, like a spirit and a body.

Syndromes, which screened Wednesday and was recently released on DVD, is both more oblique and more outgoing than Tropical Malady. The movie has no story to speak of, but it is hardly shapeless. As rigorously constructed as a Chaplin two-reeler, the movie is set in two hospitals, miles (and apparently years) apart, inspired by the courtship of Weerasethakul's parents, both doctors. At times, the movie is dryly hilarious, as when a Buddhist monk confesses that he always dreamed of being a DJ. At others, it is engrossing beyond the power of words, as when the camera explores a room filled with smoke and prosthetic limbs.

It would be easy to pigeonhole Weerasethakul's films as abstruse and arcane, and, given the limited releases his films have received (Tropical Malady is the only one to open in a Philadelphia theater), a good number of American exhibitors have been happy to do just that. But there is really nothing "difficult" about his films once you remove the expectation that they will conform to the strictures of three-act narrative. He is profoundly interested in storytelling, but for him, the telling is itself part of the story.

The short-film programs that screen Friday and Saturday nights offer vital insights into Weerasethakul's worldview. The longest, and one of the most revealing, is Worldly Desires, which at first blush resembles an eccentric making-of documentary. Only gradually does one glean that the director has staged the film within the film as well as the actions around it. As a sequined actress lip-synchs a peppy love song in the jungle, Weerasethakul stands at a distance, taking in not only the singer but the spotlight and the camera trained on her. For him, the filming process is itself part of the spectacle. As filming progresses, Weerasethakul snatches moments between shots: crew members discussing the benefits of various jobs, or two men sneaking off to urinate in the jungle.

That Weerasethakul takes equal joy in the naturalistic and the flamboyantly artificial is demonstrated in Anthem, a five-minute short designed to precede features in Thai cinemas. Its first few minutes are spent calmly observing two old women as they sit by a river, exchanging idle gossip. The scene then shifts, abruptly, to the most extravagantly unreal of settings, an indoor badminton court where a film shoot is apparently taking place. As Weerasethakul's camera moves rapidly in a circle, we catch glimpses of men scaling scaffolding, an in-progress aerobics class, and a folding table set up just under the badminton net, at which two women appear to be sorting through a pile of tennis balls. Exactly what manner of shoot might involve any one of these things, let alone all three, is difficult to fathom, but Anthem is not a code to be cracked. Its mystery is a thing to be savored. To unravel it would be to break its spell.

(s_adams@citypaper.net)