Last Life in the Universe (2003)

Kenji is a nebbish Japanese man living in Bangkok. He lives alone, works in a local library and frequently thinks about suicide - though not with much passion. One day an attractive girl smiles at him, and later that night he sees her again on a bridge that he was thinking of throwing himself off. She smiles at him again... then gets hit by a car.

As a big fan of Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's previous two films I couldn't have been more excited to learn that he was working with Christopher Doyle on his next project, and that Tadanobu Asano, Takashi Miike and Riki Takeuchi would all be in the cast.

A screwball comedy about a man who wants to kill himself but keeps getting other people killed instead... would be a very different film to this. Instead we get a languidly paced, subtle and contemplative film about two unmoored characters who drift together in the quiet aftermath of tragedy.

Circumstances lead Kenji to spend some time with Noi, the sister of the girl who was killed on the bridge. These two very different characters have a language barrier between them but a shared trauma to bond them. Kenji spends a few days at Noi's home and the two try to understand each other, literally and figuratively.

The film is partly a character study, with Kenji and Noi seeming to be polar opposites at first but discovering a shared humanity under the surface, and a common lack of purpose in their lives. The small act of making an effort to understand someone from another culture produces a more meaningful human connection than anything they experience in their day to day lives.

A film like this is all about the performances. Tadanobu Asano had already demonstrated his talent and versatility so it's no surprise that he is superb in a role as different as it could be from Ichi The Killer (whose poster hilariously hangs in the library). Sinitta Boonyasak was far less of a known quantity but she doesn't let the side down. Both deliver naturalistic performances, with their attempts to learn the other's language seeming genuinely authentic (having lived in Thailand since the first time I saw this film did help me appreciate it more - not because the subtitles are bad, but because I could recognise Asano's efforts).

The dark humour found in 6ixtynin9 and Monrak Transistor is still present in LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE but it's buried deep under a more conventionally arthouse film. The narrative is vague and tenuous, bookended by consequential activity but somewhat amorphous and directionless in between - I don't mean that as a criticism, it is just the way the characters and their lives are. In this stretch the film is more about mood and tone than plot - always useful to have Christopher Doyle on hand for that. The visuals are restrained compared to his 90's films with Wong Kar-Wai, but there are a few gorgeous images.

Since this wasn't at all the film I was expecting it to be I wasn't sure what to make of it on first viewing - it was a unique and intriguing experience but I did miss the black comedy Pen-Ek Rananaruang. Making sure to be in the right mood to rewatch it helped me to appreciate the film's strengths rather than seeing what's not there... yes, it apparently took 18 years for that mood to hit. It's kind of beautiful.