A ghost -possessed vacuum can sound like a standard horror rate, but in the hands of Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, it becomes a cunning comment on pollution, the dynamics of power and the crisis of the cost of living in Bangkok.
The Boonbunchachoke debut function, selected for the week of Cannes critics, marks Thailand’s return to the prestigious festival after an absence of a decade.
«I am really excited. I am very delighted, but also nervous, because it is such a big event for me,» says Boonbunchachoke Variety. «The critics week is a very ideal platform for the film so that the world discovers it.»
«A useful ghost» follows March, who is mourning his wife Nat after she dies from dust pollution. When his spirit returns to possessing a vacuum cleaner, his unconventional human ghost relationship faces his family’s resistance. To prove his worth and his love, Nat offers to clean a factory pursued by the ghost of a worker whose death closed the operations.
The film ingeniously reinvents the history of the ghost as a satirical romantic comedy, a deliberate deviation of the renowned horror film traditions of Thailand. «Thailand is well known for horror movies, and we also have a genre that could not travel much abroad: horror comedy,» explains Boonbunchachoke. «But with this movie, I try not to follow the conventions of both paths. One of my first ideas was to ask me how a ghost could exist in contemporary society. Do you need to work? Because the cost of living here is now very expensive.»
This unique approach reflects the director’s preference for humor about horror. «I am a fun guy rather than a guy who wants to scare people,» he says.
The film addresses pressing environmental concerns in Thailand, particularly dust pollution, which has become a severe problem in the last decade. «We have contamination for dust every winter. People will begin to complain about the quality of dust in the neighborhood, especially in Bangkok and in the north,» explains Boonbunchachoke. The Thai title of the film has a double meaning in local jargon, where «dust» also refers to «people without power.»
«Dust is something we don’t want in our house. And people don’t want ghosts at home,» he observes. «The ghosts are someone who died and is supposed to leave, but they still remain in the present.»
The industrial work space in the film works as an allegorical backdrop convincing for broader social problems. «The factory itself is a very visual environment for labor and industrialization exploitation, and says a lot about how pollution could be caused by manufacturing itself and how workers could risk their lives due to working conditions,» says the director.
A co -production between Thailand (185 films), France (Haut Les Mains), Singapore (Momo Film Co) and Germany (Mayana Films), the film benefited from international collaboration, although not without challenges. An unexpected blessing was to work with a Singapore industrial designer in the crucial vacuum of the film. «I never considered working with a real industrial designer because I thought they could emphasize functionality rather than aesthetics,» admits Boonbunchachoke. «But some very strange designs occurred to him, and I was surprised.»
The film stars Davika Horne as Nat, Wisarut Himmararat as March, Apasiri Nitibhon as adding and Wanlop Rungkumjad as Krong.
Boonbunchachoke, who is ancestry of Teochew-Hainanese, graduated from the Film Department of the University of Chulalongkorn. His short film «Red Aninsri; o Punta on the Still Treming Berlin Wall» won the Junior Jury Award in Locarno in 2020. In his daily work, he works as a screenwriter for television.
«A useful ghost» represents the first Boonbunchachoke movie. Wait to challenge the perceptions of Thai cinema. «I hope people pay more attention to Thailand again. This movie is quite different from how people expect Thai cinema. This film could expand how people see what Thai’s cinema is and what kind of stories could tell.»
As for what follows, Boonbunchachoke is already gathering ideas for his second characteristic. «If this is successful to some extent, maybe the second film would be easier to do,» he says.
(Tagstotranslate) A ghost of ghost cinema
