Mysterious Object at Noon would appear to be Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s first full length feature. A doc/ drama, it combines an immersive trip through rural and urban Thailand, with the narration of what appears to be a folk story about two sisters/ teachers who are the same person, or who replace each other, which is of course something of an Apichatpong trope. At one point the film shows a set of travelling players giving an open air performance of the story to a village, with the actresses wearing identical, beautiful costumes. The viewer has to do quite a bit of work to stitch the story together, and the fact that there is no definitive version is revealed by the sequence at the end, where a group of school kids offer up their differing versions of how the story should end, which all seem to feature a bewitched tiger. Many of the tropes of his later work are therefore present, like tantalising clues. It was also notable, the day after watching Memoria, how similar rural Thailand looks to rural Colombia. The film helps to determine the director’s aesthetic, taking the viewer into a sensory exploration of modern Thailand in all its languid diversity.
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