Fearlessly original and frequently hilarious, “A Useful Ghost” almost beggars description. Beginning as one thing and ending as quite another, this dazzling first feature from the Thai filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke uses the frame of a sad-sweet sex comedy to weave together political allegory, supernatural mystery and more than one tender love story. And he does this with such skill and bravado that you never see the seams.
What you do see are motes of dust dancing in the air, their danger a pervasive narrative concern. To banish them from his apartment, the self-described Academic Ladyboy (Wisarut Homhuan) purchases a vacuum cleaner, only to be awakened one night by persistent coughing as the belching machine regurgitates its contents. Alarmed, Ladyboy summons an unsettlingly sexy repairman (Wanlop Rungkumjad), who informs him that haunted appliances are a growing problem in Thailand’s dust-plagued factories. Deceased workers, activated by the grief of their loved ones, have been returning to sabotage the equipment they believe caused their deaths.
Yet the spirit of Nat (Davika Hoorne), who also died from respiratory disease, is neither seeking revenge nor wishing to cause trouble. Missed to distraction by her husband, March (Witsarut Himmarat), Nat returns in the form of an especially slinky vacuum cleaner (created by the award-winning industrial designer Sim Hao Jie), the pulsing lights in its handle attuned to Nat’s changing emotions. And to the horror of March’s widowed mother, Suman (Apasiri Nitibhon) — already distracted by an infestation of malevolent ghosts in the factory she inherited from her husband — neither the police nor a Buddhist ritual nor a gaggle of disapproving relatives can dissuade the reunited couple from resuming marital relations.
This is all as bonkers as it sounds — you may never look at your vacuum cleaner’s attachments the same way again — with earthly and unearthly romances playing out side-by-side and deadpan comedy bumping up against tragedy. Yet the movie’s exuberant silliness proves a perfect vehicle for the ambitions and intelligence of a screenplay (by the director, who also teaches film theory) that gradually broadens and darkens to comment on Thailand’s turbulent political history. And when Nat learns she has the ability to discern the dreams of dissidents, and hence become the government’s useful ghost, the movie’s imagery grows more potent and its spirits’ intentions more menacing.
Chockablock with ideas and touching on themes of collaboration and appeasement, “A Useful Ghost” remains wonderfully buoyant in the face of weighty concerns. In the press notes, Boonbunchachoke tells us that Thailand is “full of ghosts,” people whose unsolved murders and disappearances linger in the public consciousness. In large part, his shape-shifting movie is an ode to these and other memories inconvenient to rulers who wish to erase them.
A bawdy metaphor for democracy under threat, “A Useful Ghost” has a delightful, frisky energy that coexists peacefully with the beautiful melancholy of its central love affair as March comes to terms with his wife’s new job.
“There were lots of dreamers today,” Nat reports to her government handler after a particularly stressful shift. In an authoritarian society, aren’t there always?
A Useful Ghost Not rated. In Thai, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. In theaters.
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