A film by Roderick Warich. Showing at the fsk from 13 August. Original Thai ver­si­on with German subtitles

[Credits] [Tickets & Termine] [Trailer]

Jen lives in Bangkok – bet­ween the recep­ti­on of an apart­ment block and the hotel rooms of stran­ge men. What she sells is time, inti­ma­cy, some­ti­mes just a moment. When a mee­ting gets out of hand, Wason steps in – a bar­man who has lost more than he lets on. For a short while, they drift through the sul­try nights tog­e­ther.
Then Jen is gone. No trace. No good­bye.
Pim, her flat­ma­te, beg­ins to search for her. Wason fol­lows her. Her trail leads through emp­ty alley­ways, unfa­mi­li­ar rooms, out­stan­ding debts and memo­ries that slip away. All the way to the Cambodian bor­der – or per­haps just back to whe­re Jen had long sin­ce vanis­hed.
When Jen vanis­hes – wit­hout a word, wit­hout say­ing good­bye – her flat­ma­te Pim and the quiet bar­man Wason fol­low her trail. A quiet search beg­ins, through nights, memo­ries – and a city that mis­ses no one.

“If you show a gun in the first act, it must be fired in the third act” – a dra­ma­tic rule by Anton Chekhov, which is about nar­ra­ti­ve eco­no­my, avo­i­ding loo­se ends and buil­ding ten­si­on. In his film Funeral Casino Blues, Roderick Warich shows the gun almost right at the start: Wason (Wason Dokkathum) has it tucked into his wais­t­band; he lifts his shirt to free Jen (Jutamat Lamoon) from an intru­si­ve admi­rer (read: cli­ent). The gun will reap­pear time and again. It is also fired. But this hap­pens off-screen, after fade-to-black sequen­ces, and not neces­s­a­ri­ly in the third act eit­her, becau­se Warich is far remo­ved from any­thing resembling a clear divi­si­on into acts, or inde­ed any struc­tu­red, stan­dar­di­sed nar­ra­ti­ve style.
And that is what makes his film so utter­ly fasci­na­ting, so abso­lut­e­ly worth wat­ching. You just have to let yours­elf be drawn in, and then you can lose yours­elf in hyp­no­tic images in which the came­ra moves through the room, through Bangkok by night; then you can lose yours­elf in the cha­rac­ters, who­se inner­most thoughts we can at best only glim­pse; then you can immer­se yours­elf in a sto­ry that shifts from a love sto­ry to a noir gangs­ter tale, which beco­mes a ghost film wit­hout being a hor­ror film.„
Kinozeit | Harald Mühlbeyer

Credits:

DE 2025, 153 mins · Original Thai ver­si­on with German sub­tit­les
Director: Roderick Warich
Cinematography: Roland Stuprich
Editing: Hannes Bruun
Starring: Jutamat Lamoon · Wason Dokkathum · Jutarat Burinok · Piyapong Saebui · Rinda Hamer · Chayanee Choomnoommanee

Trailer:

nach oben