'Snap' judgement

One of director Kongdej Jaturanrasmee’s favourite supporting characters – Thai politics – make an appearance in all his films yet are never obtrusive, forming instead a gentle backdrop for the main storyline. His latest film “Snap”, which opens the World Film Festival of Bangkok on Friday night, is no exception, with the director observing how Thais are going about their daily lives following the coup d’etat in May 2014, and showing how the social networks help them survive.

Set shortly after the introduction of martial law, “Snap” tells the story of Pueng (Waruntorn Paonil), the daughter of a colonel who is engaged to a young lieutenant. Before her big day, Pueng accepts a wedding invitation from old friends in her hometown of Chanthaburi. There, she's reunited not just with her pals from high school but also with her first love, a photographer named Boy (Toni Rakkaen), with whom she has unresolved issues. 

Bereft of a Thai title, the director says he chose “Snap” because the word implies the moment a snapshot is taken and also means a sudden and complete break.

“I care more about human relationships than politics but the film is about more than just a romance,” Kongdej tells XP.

“Snap”, he admits, is simpler and subtler than his earlier movies, which include the romantic drama “Cherm” (“Midnight My Love”) and 2013’s hit “Tang Wong”. But while it's centred on romance, it is also a reflection of contemporary Thai society and how politics have an increased influence on daily life.

“Perhaps I’m getting older. Perhaps it’s the inspiration I got from focusing on two kids in my documentary ‘So Be It’. Or maybe it’s just that I wanted to make a simple film with an emotional atmosphere instead of pushing lots of ideas into the story and the characters like I’ve done in the past,” says the director.

In an interview at the Tokyo International Film Festival last month, where “Snap” premiered in the main competition, Kongdej told reporters that the main character, Pueng, reflects how today people live through their smartphones even when they are lucky enough to enjoy real-time contact with friends.

“The social networks have an enormous influence on our everyday life. They also underline conflicts, with people ‘unfriending’ each other simply because of different political viewpoints,” he laments.

“I hope the audience, after watching this film, will look back on how many people used to be part of their circle but no longer are and think about why they are gone,” says Kongdej.

“The idea for the film has been in my subconscious for a while. I wanted to record how people feel about this current political backdrop. Politics are more part of our lives than ever before and this really affects the middle class, and so is close to my life. It’s become something of a personal project for me,” he says.

“It’s about the middle classes, the people who surround me, and that’s a first for me,” adds Kongdej”, whose earlier works have focused mainly on the marginal – a tomboy in a porn magazine in “Sayew”, a man with three arms in “Kod” (“Handle Me With Care”) and a taxi driver and a massage parlour worker in “Cherm” (“Midnight My Love”).

He feels that “Snap” is closer to “Sayew” than his other films, pointing out that both have female protagonists with the tools to escape from the turmoil in daily life. 

“Today people use the social networks to expose themselves. They create a ‘self’’ through their status, their hashtag, and want the world to see them via those tools. 

“Man has always come up to tools to make himself look better to the world. Today it’s the social media, in the future it will probably be something else.”

He chose to cast rookie actress Waruntorn in the lead because, he says, her life and character fit Pueng nicely and she is also representative of a middle-class woman. Waruntorn was in a girl group at RS Promotion’s Kamikaze when she was in her early teens and is now a student in vocal studies at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts.

Making “Snap” hasn’t been without its problems, not least because Kongdej started with a very limited budget. As with his previous film, the documentary “A-Wang” (“So Be It”), TrueVisions provided the financial backing on the understanding it would only be released on television. But Kongdej wanted to expand the story so that it was also suitable for the cinema and while TrueVisions raised no objection, its budget remained at TV-movie level. 

That left Kongdej and his producer Soroso Sukhum scrambling to find other investors to complete the project.

While the pair did attract funding from North Star Production Company, with whom they worked on “Tang Wong”, the financing wasn’t enough to complete the film. Kongdej sank all the money he earned from his previous projects into “Snap” and although that left him short, he is hoping that the income from the release will be sufficient to reimburse his investors.

 “It’s a movie made with much pain. I hope it reaches out to a large audience so that I can pay back all who helped me to complete the project,” says Kongdej.

 

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