Uncle Boonmee who can Recall His Past Lives

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES
NEW WAVE FILMS
RELEASED 19 November 2010

The most unexpected and rapturously received Cannes Palme d’Or winner ever (I’m quoting, I wasn’t there. I think I should have been. Please do petition the editor to send me to the south of France for two weeks in May next year, please…), ‘Uncle Boonmee’ is the weirdest film I have seen all year. It’s about a dying man in the jungle seeing ghosts, some of which seem to be man-monkeys with red eyes. Yeah, it’s weird alright.

Dying farmer Uncle Boonmee spends his last days on his plantation, where he is visited by his late wife Huay and his long-lost son Boonsong, who has become one of the man-monkeys. Apparently, we glimpse a moment from a possible past life of Boonmee’s between an unhappy princess and a catfish. Is Boonmee the princess or the catfish? I don’t know, but they have appear to have some sort of sexual encounter. Have I mentioned this film is a bit weird?

A scene at the end of the film sees characters seemingly paused while the same characters go off to the pub. I really don’t know what this meant! Honestly, I really don’t know what any of the film was about. Reading up on the film, Boonmee is an amalgam of director Apichatpong himself, his late father and a real-life man who had an unusual talent for recalling past lives, both human and animal.

Unfathomability aside, I actually enjoyed ‘Uncle Boonmee’. It’s incredibly slow, but has a transcendent, hypnotic quality that I haven’t experienced in the cinema before. Of course, I have some difficulty in recommending this movie to you, dear reader, who has to plonk down their hard-earned cash and expects to be entertained. Please only go if you fancy a pretentious, meandering, inconclusive Cannes arthouse picture. Fair warning I think.

THREE OUT OF FIVE