This first film from director Aditya Assarat is mostly quiet and absorbing. The film tells of the relationship of Ton (Supphasit Kansen), an architect who is supervising the building of a resort hotel on the beach in southern Thailand, post tsunami, and Na (Anchalee Saisoontorn), a hotel clerk/maid who lives in a town in the mountains of Thailand. Ton stays at the hotel and slowly you see the relationship of these two people evolve,how it ebbs and flows. You see the sweet moments and challenges, including Na being concerned that the townspeople are gossiping about them. The two characters are fairly likable and Na seems to become prettier as the movie goes on. The scenery of the mountains is very nice, the cinematography is very good. This film is slow moving and has an undercurrent of foreboding throughout, but I found the pace to be essential and the acting by the two main actors very good. Even the musical score, mostly an acoustic guitar, is good. Not for everyone due to its slow moving pace, its a must for fans of Asian cinema and anyone who feels they can relate to a story like this. I felt this film was well made and captured the essence of time and place extremely well. A fairly impressive debut for Aditya Assarat.
11 Reviews
Classic love story with an ominous twist
rasecz6 April 2008
Somewhere on Thailand's south coast. A sleepy town not too far from the beach. A young architect with business to care of in the area checks in at a shabby hotel for a two months stay. The owner/manager is a young woman. It's love at first sight though the relationship matures slowly.
The bulk of the film plays as a classic love story with a Thai flavor. What's different is the presence of an ominous threat that seems to hang in the air. A relative of the woman does not seem too happy with the developing relationship. It's a shady character. The danger filled atmosphere is enhanced by a nice ethereal music. The ending is a total surprise. It's a metaphorical tsunami with an uncomfortable sense of poetic justice.
The bulk of the film plays as a classic love story with a Thai flavor. What's different is the presence of an ominous threat that seems to hang in the air. A relative of the woman does not seem too happy with the developing relationship. It's a shady character. The danger filled atmosphere is enhanced by a nice ethereal music. The ending is a total surprise. It's a metaphorical tsunami with an uncomfortable sense of poetic justice.
Confusing ending
peter-266228 February 2010
Warning: Spoilers
My wife and I happened to watch this film separately - we rented the DVD, but couldn't watch it together. The first three quarters is a lovely romantic love story set in against the back drop of a small Thai town near the coast recovering from the effects of the Tsunami. What we both found highly unsatisfactory was the confusing ending. The murder of the lead male character just comes completely out the blue - and what was the phone call he was making just before the attack - at first I thought - Oh No - he's got a wife and he's been unfaithful and is going to break the girls heart - but then maybe it was to his father whom we fleetingly heard he's had a bad relationship with. Next thing you know he's beaten to death and thrown into the local river. I've read the other reviews that try to explain this ending - but I'm sorry, it's a bad ending if I have to go on the internet to try to understand it. Some say its the hostility of the locals, or its the brother (who is a gangster) who can't stand to see his sister happy - but I'm sorry, apart from a few kids on scooters I didn't see much hostility and the gangster brother seemed to give his blessing to the relationship. I suppose the randomness of the Tsunami makes some sense, but there's a big difference between a deliberate murder and a natural disaster. Sorry, good film let down by a very confusing last 10 minutes.
Flotsam and jetsam
richard_sleboe12 February 2008
"Wonderful Town" is like an Alex Garland novel minus the mystery. Set in Southern Thailand, it takes us to the site of the 2004 tsunami. Bangkok-based writer-director Aditya Assarat says he has created the lead character Ton, an architect visiting a small coastal town devastated by the wave, in his own image. Ton falls in love with Na, a young woman working as a chambermaid at his hotel. Before long, he learns the hard way that her family doesn't like the idea of outsiders romancing local girls. Who would have guessed? The storytelling is painfully slow and predictable, and the mood is subdued throughout. One small thing I enjoyed was how Na uses essential oil as a universal remedy, a quirk not unlike Gus Portokalos' obsession with Windex in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". But even this magic potion can't cure her blues. The fact that local thugs run around wearing printed shirts spelling out "Grand Feeling" or "Importance" only adds to the general sense of loss and despair. You will enjoy "Wonderful Town" if you like slow-paced, melancholic movies. If you're looking for action, stay away.
Beautifully shot, well-scored film which stretches credulity through an inexplicable story-ending twist
register_register200218 September 2010
Warning: Spoilers
Set on the Andaman coast just north of Phuket, southern Thailand, and in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, "Wonderful Town" begins as a slow-paced romance between a man sent by his company to oversee the construction of a beachside resort and the innkeeper of a nearly deserted, inland hotel at which the man stays. Shortly after the man's arrival, it becomes apparent that a mutual spark of interest develops between the two and a gentle courtship ensues. Through the spare dialogue we learn care of the inn has passed from an aging mother and deceased father to the innkeeper and her brother who is part of a gang and has shirked all responsibility for the inn. The visitor has volunteered at his company to a do-nothing supervision of the construction project he says to escape congested Bangkok for a couple months but which the audience learns at the end may or may not be for another reason. The relationship grows over the several weeks from flirtation to physical intimacy, disturbed only by the antagonizing from several boys on scooters, the "gang" led by the innkeeper's brother, who seem to take some unwelcome interest in the visitor--at one point his car is broken into.
The film is beautifully shot, the tempo of desolate town life ably captured, and the complementary soundtrack superbly scored, but several of the overlong edits bring the pace to a needless crawl. Further, though the simplicity of the dialogue and seeming innocence of the couple's actions give the movie a realness, both characters are uncompelling, perhaps in part because the acting is just fair.
The story's main undoing though comes at the end over a puzzling act perpetrated by the innkeeper's brother and his gang. The audience is left questioning why they would conspire to take the visitor's life. Jealousy? Territoriality? Punishment? Even the depiction of the ambush and subsequent disposal of the body, though violent acts, seem unreal and unconvincing.
The antagonists' (including the brother's) characters are all underdeveloped and so too are their motivations.
Just before the ambush, the visitor is seen having a private and mysterious, emotionally charged conversation by telephone. The audience hears only his end of the talk and I thought at first the other party might be his father who was earlier described as someone from whom the visitor had grown estranged. A Thai friend though thought it was an ex-wife and that on learning this, the innkeeper's brother exacts the ultimate punishment for the visitor's misrepresenting his heart and intentions. If so, where and how was this revelation to the brother conveyed? Was something lost in subtitled translation? (And were this the case, my friend claims such an unsolicited act by an absent brother for his sister stretches credulity.)
Or is the inexplicability of the killing a forced metaphor for the devastation of the tsunami? This appears unlikely, as even natural disasters have causation, and moreover drawing parallels between the seeming unpredictability of an earthquake and the premeditated deliberation of a murder is a stretch.
On one thing both my Thai friend (though her review is harsher than mine) and I agree: "Wonderful Town" in its summation misses the mark.
For people with an interest in or familiarity with the area or culture, the cinematography alone may be worth a viewing. Others may want to pass.
Rate: 6.5 out of 10 (rounded to 7 for IMDb).
The film is beautifully shot, the tempo of desolate town life ably captured, and the complementary soundtrack superbly scored, but several of the overlong edits bring the pace to a needless crawl. Further, though the simplicity of the dialogue and seeming innocence of the couple's actions give the movie a realness, both characters are uncompelling, perhaps in part because the acting is just fair.
The story's main undoing though comes at the end over a puzzling act perpetrated by the innkeeper's brother and his gang. The audience is left questioning why they would conspire to take the visitor's life. Jealousy? Territoriality? Punishment? Even the depiction of the ambush and subsequent disposal of the body, though violent acts, seem unreal and unconvincing.
The antagonists' (including the brother's) characters are all underdeveloped and so too are their motivations.
Just before the ambush, the visitor is seen having a private and mysterious, emotionally charged conversation by telephone. The audience hears only his end of the talk and I thought at first the other party might be his father who was earlier described as someone from whom the visitor had grown estranged. A Thai friend though thought it was an ex-wife and that on learning this, the innkeeper's brother exacts the ultimate punishment for the visitor's misrepresenting his heart and intentions. If so, where and how was this revelation to the brother conveyed? Was something lost in subtitled translation? (And were this the case, my friend claims such an unsolicited act by an absent brother for his sister stretches credulity.)
Or is the inexplicability of the killing a forced metaphor for the devastation of the tsunami? This appears unlikely, as even natural disasters have causation, and moreover drawing parallels between the seeming unpredictability of an earthquake and the premeditated deliberation of a murder is a stretch.
On one thing both my Thai friend (though her review is harsher than mine) and I agree: "Wonderful Town" in its summation misses the mark.
For people with an interest in or familiarity with the area or culture, the cinematography alone may be worth a viewing. Others may want to pass.
Rate: 6.5 out of 10 (rounded to 7 for IMDb).
Not perfect, but atmospheric and worth seeing
runamokprods13 June 2011
It's funny, most critics either didn't like this (too thin, boring) or loved it (delicate, tells so much with so little).
I found myself in the middle, understanding both sides.
This gentle, quiet, slow moving romance between a Thai woman who runs a nearly abandoned hotel, and an architect who comes to town to help repair a local beach resort after it was devastated by the Tsunami has moments of great grace and tenderness, and moments that feel either heavy handed, or not-quite earned.
There's an attempt to capture the spooky atmosphere of a town that's been destroyed, leaving behind thousands of ghosts. That works well when it's unspoken and vague, a little less well when it's made concrete in the form of the lead woman's angry rootless bother and her friends, who bring literal violence and danger into the story, in a slightly forced way.
None-the-less, a well made, well acted, well shot, thought provoking first feature.
I found myself in the middle, understanding both sides.
This gentle, quiet, slow moving romance between a Thai woman who runs a nearly abandoned hotel, and an architect who comes to town to help repair a local beach resort after it was devastated by the Tsunami has moments of great grace and tenderness, and moments that feel either heavy handed, or not-quite earned.
There's an attempt to capture the spooky atmosphere of a town that's been destroyed, leaving behind thousands of ghosts. That works well when it's unspoken and vague, a little less well when it's made concrete in the form of the lead woman's angry rootless bother and her friends, who bring literal violence and danger into the story, in a slightly forced way.
None-the-less, a well made, well acted, well shot, thought provoking first feature.
Drowned by a ripple
paul2001sw-124 August 2010
Aditya Assarat's début film 'Wonderful Town' is unusual, but there are aspects of it which left me puzzling as to what the director was trying to achieve. In the aftermath of the Asian tsunami quiet young architect seduces a shy hotel worker; it's sweetly observed, but hardly a dramatic story, and the role of the great flood is mainly to ensure that the tale can be told in an eerily empty landscape. The local youth dislike the visitor, however, and this provides a savage twist in the end; but even their hostility is vague, strangely noble and shown softly even when at it most horrific. More like a ripple than a wave, I didn't dislike this movie, but was hardly swept away.
In the land of the tsuname, love and menace
Chris Knipp3 May 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Fledgling Thai director Aditya Assarat begins the stunning 'Wonderful Town' with flat, screen-filling images of gentle waves that introduce the locale of southern Thailand hit hard by the 2004 tsunami. This opening heralds the film's strong visual sense as well as a prevailing serenity that is not without edges of menace as time goes on. Convincing performances and lovely visuals serve a subtle, haunting screenplay and the whole shows a strong narrative sense that pays off with the cumulative power of the finale.
This is the story of a young man and woman who come together in a kind of limbo. Their personal stories emerge in bits and pieces as a romance develops between Ton and Na. Ton (Supphasit Kansen) is an architect who comes from Bangkok and stays at a very ordinary hotel where he meets Na (Anchalee Saisoontorn), who seems a clerk and maid, but emerges as the sole member of the owner family who is present to run the place. Ton's work is on a project nearby where luxury resort buildings are under construction near unrestored, perhaps haunted relics of the storm damage. He's volunteered to be here to please the client and in effect just spend a peaceful two months away from the noise of the capital doing not very much. The setting itself, the tsunami town of Takua Pa, is the inspiration for the film.
Ton is interested in Na right away, as he openly reveals when he goes out on a rooftop to help her fold up laundry. He's not so much flirtatious as open and relaxed in a way that shows he wants to be with her. Na is reserved but receptive. A scene where she listens to him singing in the shower shows she's interested too. They go on a little "date," they kiss, they walk together here and there.
There aren't many people around: an older man and woman who work at the hotel; then after a while Wit (Dul Yaambunying) appears, a dicey individual who might be an estranged husband (he's moved out; she asks him to come back), but turns out to be Na's brother, a self-declared reprobate who won't come to help run the hotel.
The romance between Ton and Na is marked by beauty and delicacy. The whole locale seems a place of openness and quiet, despite the noise of the construction site, which Ton has to drive back and forth to. Ton's personal ease is underlined by his tendency to break into little songs. He turns out to have had an earlier life as a musician and his father so disapproved that for five years they've been out of touch.
There's disapproval closer at hand. Four boys on loud motorcycles who circle around and around are the first powerful sign of threat; they're like Cocteau's avenging angels or the hot-rodders in Manuel Pradal's 'Marie baie des anges.' Now Na's warning to Ton that this is a small place and they need to be circumspect makes sense. From then on every scene effortlessly communicates its hints of hostility, perhaps serious danger.
Assarat makes it all seem so simple. The earlier scenes are flat and undeclarative, with the camera often still. The Director of Photography Umpornpol Yugala provides lovely, soft colors and is equally effective in eye-filling closeups of Na's bare skin as with landscapes with figures in the distance. The tight-lipped dialogue keeps the viewer attentive. Zai Kuning and Koichi Shimizu provide delicate guitar backgrounds that hint at uncertainty as well as fill in a sense of calm. Every moment counts. The sense is of a place that's as much traumatized as it is recovering.
Ton's and Na's back stories are a little mysterious. It's not certain what Ton is planning to do at the end.
Aditya Assarat has produced a remarkable film that promises much for the future. It received awards at Las Palmas and Rotterdam and opens in Paris May 7,2008.
Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival 2008.
This is the story of a young man and woman who come together in a kind of limbo. Their personal stories emerge in bits and pieces as a romance develops between Ton and Na. Ton (Supphasit Kansen) is an architect who comes from Bangkok and stays at a very ordinary hotel where he meets Na (Anchalee Saisoontorn), who seems a clerk and maid, but emerges as the sole member of the owner family who is present to run the place. Ton's work is on a project nearby where luxury resort buildings are under construction near unrestored, perhaps haunted relics of the storm damage. He's volunteered to be here to please the client and in effect just spend a peaceful two months away from the noise of the capital doing not very much. The setting itself, the tsunami town of Takua Pa, is the inspiration for the film.
Ton is interested in Na right away, as he openly reveals when he goes out on a rooftop to help her fold up laundry. He's not so much flirtatious as open and relaxed in a way that shows he wants to be with her. Na is reserved but receptive. A scene where she listens to him singing in the shower shows she's interested too. They go on a little "date," they kiss, they walk together here and there.
There aren't many people around: an older man and woman who work at the hotel; then after a while Wit (Dul Yaambunying) appears, a dicey individual who might be an estranged husband (he's moved out; she asks him to come back), but turns out to be Na's brother, a self-declared reprobate who won't come to help run the hotel.
The romance between Ton and Na is marked by beauty and delicacy. The whole locale seems a place of openness and quiet, despite the noise of the construction site, which Ton has to drive back and forth to. Ton's personal ease is underlined by his tendency to break into little songs. He turns out to have had an earlier life as a musician and his father so disapproved that for five years they've been out of touch.
There's disapproval closer at hand. Four boys on loud motorcycles who circle around and around are the first powerful sign of threat; they're like Cocteau's avenging angels or the hot-rodders in Manuel Pradal's 'Marie baie des anges.' Now Na's warning to Ton that this is a small place and they need to be circumspect makes sense. From then on every scene effortlessly communicates its hints of hostility, perhaps serious danger.
Assarat makes it all seem so simple. The earlier scenes are flat and undeclarative, with the camera often still. The Director of Photography Umpornpol Yugala provides lovely, soft colors and is equally effective in eye-filling closeups of Na's bare skin as with landscapes with figures in the distance. The tight-lipped dialogue keeps the viewer attentive. Zai Kuning and Koichi Shimizu provide delicate guitar backgrounds that hint at uncertainty as well as fill in a sense of calm. Every moment counts. The sense is of a place that's as much traumatized as it is recovering.
Ton's and Na's back stories are a little mysterious. It's not certain what Ton is planning to do at the end.
Aditya Assarat has produced a remarkable film that promises much for the future. It received awards at Las Palmas and Rotterdam and opens in Paris May 7,2008.
Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival 2008.
A failure to communicate
wondercritic9 April 2008
It probably does not give too much away to point out that the title is facetious. The "town" depicted in the film consists of a small seaside municipality in Thailand, presumably two or three years after the tsunami of 2004. The town is, for all intents and purposes, dead, but a young architect from Bangkok arrives to supervise construction of a new resort hotel. Evidently, investment in local tourism is just re-starting, but the place is still essentially a ghost town with only one functioning "rest-stop" type hotel inland. The architect starts to flirt with the young woman who works in this hotel, and whose family owns and runs it. A romance begins against the bleak backdrop, a world in which everyone left after the disaster of 2004 knows everyone else. Before long the out-of-towner architect has some unpleasant encounters with a gang of teenage petty hoodlums who ride around the area on little whining motorcycles. The building sense of unease is successfully conveyed, but the reason the film fails on several levels is that it relies too much on the audience's ability to perceive the "telepathy" between the characters, telepathy consistent with Oriental societies. It will not be immediately clear to many why the film ends the way it does, for example, or what the characters actually mean by their gazes and actions. There is a lot of "eye language", the meaning of which will only become clear to the viewer after walking out of the cinema and pondering the movie for a while. This dissipates the immediate effectiveness of the film and its screenplay, since movies unlike books cannot communicate thoughts easily. The performances are competent but not otherwise remarkable. Perhaps the film's only unqualified success is that the main character of the film, throughout, is undoubtedly the town itself.
Wake up!
canjay771 January 2011
The genius of this film is that it uses sub-plot to mask its main plot: this is NOT about whether or not the lovers squeeze a happy ending out of their situation; rather it is about how the main character Na gets her brother back and makes her family whole again. It starts and ends with this. It is nothing short of brilliant of this director to have hidden this right before our eyes through tapping into our prejudices about sex and relationships. If you don't get this of course you will find this movie full of question marks and loose ends. Also the pace of this movie is perfect; it is the pace of life in Thai towns. Those who don't understand this may have been to Thailand but unless they have wasted an entire day or more waiting to get somewhere have not had an authentically Thai experience. This movie is a good example both in how it tells its story and the technology of the lives it portrays of how global culture is evolving into something beautiful and subtly expressive. It apologizes for nothing about Thai culture, and, like Thailand itself, shows a vitality that is capable of assimilating what it likes from ours without losing even a shred of its integrity. I congratulate this director and everyone associated with this film, it is a gem!
Beautiful movie
roegmann4 April 2013
Warning: Spoilers
What a wonderful movie. The director, Aditya Assarant, uses Hou Hsiao-hsien-style pacing throughout this beautiful, languid, and thoughtful movie. It is the story of reformed drunk musician, Ton (Supphaisit Kansen) from the big city, Bangkok, who is now an architect working in Southern Thailand to restore a hotel. He stays at a small local inn run by a woman, Na (Anchalee Saisootorn), who is the young matriarch of a family fractured by the tsunami.
The love story between Ton and Na progress slowly, as most do in real life. Ton likes Na right away and his overtures to her are thoughtful and easy going. She slowly warms up to him, cinematically told by her wearing more colorful clothes, some color in her face, and the change in camera fluidity. Her brother notes the change in Na.
The devastation of the tsunami is shown in matter of fact moments. The destruction of hotels, homes, and families is just shown without elaboration. Na cares for her nephew and the hotel alone; partly because of the tsunami and partly because her brother, Wit (Dul Yaambunying), is a low level gangster.
The couples have a quietness together. There is a beautiful scene in the movie, where Ton and Na are lying in a field of grass. Ton puts a wild flower in Na's hair and they just lie together, blissfully happy with the wind literally the only thing you hear. This is also the turning point of the movie. Bad things begin to happen with increasing level of "violence".
As Ton and Na's romance blossom, the townsfolk disapprove. In part because you have the big city boy vs. small town girl, traditional Thai courtship vs. new courtship rules, and, I believe, as a metaphor for the indiscriminate devastation of the tsunami.
There are some things to pay attention to and they are: the quietness. Assarant lets the scenes develop in Kenji Mizoguchi silence, blissful quiet, and a wonderful acoustic guitar as the thread that weaves the signature scenes together. I doubt many young people can watch and I fear many a Westerner, but it is all mother's milk to me.
Much has been made about the seemingly discombobulated ending. Why does Ton have to die? Why does Wit kill him? My opinion (and, yes, I know, opinions are like bad breath-everybody has it), is that it there may be more than one reason: 1) Wit wanted out of the gangster life and his only way was to use a perfect excuse-kill the man that is romancing his sister. Now, he can say to his mates, I have to care for her, so I must work at the hotel; 2) The seeming randomness of the killing is a metaphor for the random death meted out by the tsunami. Both work for me.
Enjoy the movie for a finely crafted work of understated art.
The love story between Ton and Na progress slowly, as most do in real life. Ton likes Na right away and his overtures to her are thoughtful and easy going. She slowly warms up to him, cinematically told by her wearing more colorful clothes, some color in her face, and the change in camera fluidity. Her brother notes the change in Na.
The devastation of the tsunami is shown in matter of fact moments. The destruction of hotels, homes, and families is just shown without elaboration. Na cares for her nephew and the hotel alone; partly because of the tsunami and partly because her brother, Wit (Dul Yaambunying), is a low level gangster.
The couples have a quietness together. There is a beautiful scene in the movie, where Ton and Na are lying in a field of grass. Ton puts a wild flower in Na's hair and they just lie together, blissfully happy with the wind literally the only thing you hear. This is also the turning point of the movie. Bad things begin to happen with increasing level of "violence".
As Ton and Na's romance blossom, the townsfolk disapprove. In part because you have the big city boy vs. small town girl, traditional Thai courtship vs. new courtship rules, and, I believe, as a metaphor for the indiscriminate devastation of the tsunami.
There are some things to pay attention to and they are: the quietness. Assarant lets the scenes develop in Kenji Mizoguchi silence, blissful quiet, and a wonderful acoustic guitar as the thread that weaves the signature scenes together. I doubt many young people can watch and I fear many a Westerner, but it is all mother's milk to me.
Much has been made about the seemingly discombobulated ending. Why does Ton have to die? Why does Wit kill him? My opinion (and, yes, I know, opinions are like bad breath-everybody has it), is that it there may be more than one reason: 1) Wit wanted out of the gangster life and his only way was to use a perfect excuse-kill the man that is romancing his sister. Now, he can say to his mates, I have to care for her, so I must work at the hotel; 2) The seeming randomness of the killing is a metaphor for the random death meted out by the tsunami. Both work for me.
Enjoy the movie for a finely crafted work of understated art.
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