UrbanWire

By Germaine Lim · UrbanWire
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The first thing about Pen-ek Ratanaruang, the film director in the running for a 2004 Foreign Film Oscar, that struck me was his relaxed aura. Wearing a plain white t-shirt, loose baby blue corduroy jeans and sneakers, the 42-year-old, in Singapore for 2 days to promote Last Life in the Universe with Cathay-Keris Films Pte Ltd, had a filter dangling from his lips, and as he rolled loose tobacco leaves into a skinny cigarette. He casually asked, "Can I smoke?" with a flick of his lighter as he sat with his back towards the breeze at the preview theatre of the School of Film & Media Studies in Ngee Ann Polytechnic, where he was showing the movie ahead of its release.

Last Life in the Universe revolves around the Japanese lead, Kenji, who works in Thailand as a librarian. The audience is shrouded by questions about his past and his path to Thailand, when he fails at several suicide attempts and conceals a full back Yakuza tattoo behind his crisply ironed shirts. He meets Thai bar-girl, Noi at the scene of her sister's traffic accident and moves into her run-down beach house. Noi is about to migrate to Osaka in a few days and an awkward relationship forges between the 2 strangers. With the magical touch of Pen-ek's direction, their relationship develops into a gripping and riveting film tied together with strong emotional bonds.

I read in your Last Life in the Universe official website that before this film, you were sick of all your previous 3 movies. Why was that?

"I have never been happy with my work anyway. Whenever I finish it, I think, 'Oh I shouldn't have done this and that.' I think looking at all of them in a row, the biggest problem I had with them was they were too straightforward and upfront. If I wanted people to cry, I did this, if I wanted people to laugh, I did that. So when I started this project I thought this may be a good time to do something a little more subtle, even though there were times it probably went too subtle, and became obscure even."

Did you leave certain things obscure intentionally so as to allow the audience space for imagination?

"The story is very simple; it is about a guy and a girl… they meet so there is hardly any spectacular plot to look forward to. The whole film is built on emotions. If you watch the film, you will feel that it is very lonely with a melancholic sense. I took liberty into directing - that at certain times I could become very obscure and see how I feel about it. It's a film you don't do so much based on your intelligence, but based purely on your feelings. If something feels good or nice, you don't really have to justify it. To me Last Life in the Universe is not like a film; it's almost like a music album. It gives that kind of undefinable feeling."

"The whole film is a reflection of my personal life. When I made this film I was very lonely. I have always been very lonely anyway. I know a lot of people, but I don't have many friends. I like to stay home and now that I am a bit older I am more in touch with that loneliness. When you are younger, loneliness seems like a bad thing. You will call your friends, go out and have drinks. But when you are older it is not such a bad thing anymore, you live with it and you try to understand it a bit.
In a way, this film reflects that feeling. It's a very slow film and it happened at a point of my life when everything was really rushed. I had to go for film festivals and I had to shoot TV commercials so this film is almost like a reaction to that. It's a very relaxing film, which tells you to slow down."

This movie brings together talents from Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand. What was it like filming with such a cosmopolitan crew?

"It's a big chaos. Not so much the language but we all come from different systems of film making, like Christopher Doyle is from Hong Kong so he shoots really fast; Asano the lead actor comes from the traditional Japanese filmmaking industry, which is very precise. He has to know exactly what he has to do today, and I am this Thai person who doesn't know what he's doing most of the time and I am very lazy, so I am somewhere in the middle of the two.
In the beginning it was quite chaotic, but I think that's what filmmaking is about, if you have trust it will work. It's a big mystery why and how it works. If you don't have trust, it will fall apart. But if you have trust, you solve problems day by day and that's important."

"I was quite happy with it, strangely, because I am always unhappy with my work. I think the film gives off the right feeling I wanted from the beginning. What's more surprising is the fact that throughout the whole filming process, I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing half of the time and feeling insecure about it most of the time. We were mostly finding the film as we went along, so when I finally saw the film put together, it was a pleasure to watch."

Was there any incident during the production of this film which left an impression on you?

"The whole movie was an experience for me. My movie is a very small movie and I think that my crew is over-qualified. We've got Christopher Doyle, who worked on Hero. My film shoot is very boring; we just do it like office work. Throughout the filming everybody was trying to understand me because they didn't know what I wanted. However, they tried their best to understand and support me and I think that will stay with me. Filming is a strange thing - most of the time it's based on one person's experience. It's not like writing where you can write everything out and focus on one thing. And for me, it's important that everybody tried to understand and support it. Filmmaking is collaboration."

Last Life in the Universe has been nominated as Thailand's entry for the Academy Awards 2004. How confident are you of its success?

"No, not [confident] at all. It's a small film from Thailand, and if it's nominated, I'll be happy; but if it doesn't, I wouldn't lose sleep over it."

"I wouldn't change a thing on it even if I had a chance to. I think overall for the entire film I wouldn't say, 'Pen-ek, you have done badly'. I wouldn't say it's a perfect film but it's not too bad."

"I would probably make a few phone calls to certain people and tell them I love them. And also to some of the women I fancied but never had enough courage to go after them. That's more important than filming."