Pee chai dai ka

Moderne Geister wohnen nicht mehr im Schloss, sondern im Staubsauger. Jedenfalls in Thailand, wo die an einer Staubverschmutzung gestorbene Nat aus unendlicher Liebe zu ihrem Mann in einem solchen weiterlebt. Um den Angehörigen des wieder lustvoll verzückten Witwers ihre gute Absicht zu beweisen, willigt sie ein, die vom Geist eines Arbeiters ebenfalls heimgesuchte Fabrik der Familie zu reinigen. PEE CHAI DAI KA ist quietschvergnügliche Romanze, böse Gesellschaftssatire und politische Allegorie: Die Geister der Vergangenheit wird man nur los, wenn man nicht versucht, sie als geliebte oder gefürchtete Erinnerung unter den Teppich zu kehren. (Michael Pekler)

A man in Bangkok is unsettled by the strange noise coming from his vacuum cleaner. The flirtatious repairman who comes around to fix it explains that it is possessed by the ghost of a factory worker who died during its production. Such reincarnations of the dead are commonplace at that factory, and these vacuum cleaners can talk, haunt, care for and even make love to people. PEE CHAI DAI KA weaves together a wealth of conceptual ideas, narratives and motifs, yet does so with total playfulness, its sense of irony in perfect sync with its depth of meaning. Beneath its surreal, absurdist story lies a poignant reflection on Thailand’s national traumas and class tensions. As an erotic queer fantasy, it frames otherness as something that refuses commodification, simplification and the mainstream. Drawing on popular genres ranging from the sitcom and the romcom to sci-fi and urban ghost stories, the film sees love, death, sexuality, memory and dreams as deeply interconnected forces. What unites them is their ephemeral, transgressive and sensual nature—qualities also embedded in the very machinery of cinema, a medium that, like PEE CHAI DAI KA, moves between spaces, times and bodies with effortless fluidity. (Evgeny Gusyatinskiy)

Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke: ANINSRI; OR, TIPTOEING ON THE STILL TREMBLING BERLIN WALL (2020, K)