SOLIDS BY THE SEASHORE
Director: Patiparn Boontarig. 93 minutes. Thailand. 2023. Languages: Thai and Southern Thai. Colour.
Winner: LG OLED New Currents Award & NETPAC Award. World Premiere, Busan International Film Festival, 2023
The screening will be introduced by film critic Tara Brady (The Irish Times)
Winner of the LG OLED New Currents & NETPAC Awards, Busan International Film Festival, this tender, atmospheric debut from Thai director Patiparn Boontarig’s (assistant director Manta Ray, EAFFI 2018) set in a coastal town in southern Thailand, uniquely tackles climate change, tradition, identity and LGBT love. Shati (Ilada Pitsuwan) a Muslim from a conservative family works at the local art gallery where she meets Fon (Rawipa Srisanguan), an activist-turned-visual artist from Bangkok, completing her exhibition ‘End Effect’. Immediately attracted to each other, this opens deep internal conflict for Shati whose traditional roots forbid same-sex relationships. Fon sees things differently: ‘If we impose limitations on our lives, they end up eroding our own selves.’ This is like the ‘solids’ – the poorly built seawalls intended for coastal defence but ultimately responsible for further soil erosion with beaches filled with sand from elsewhere, and the different sands are unable to combine.
(Marie-Pierre Richard)
It’s been fourteen years since Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In the intervening period, Weerasethakul has become a major international auteur. Back in his native Thailand, his metaphysical, ethnographic cinema has left an indelible impression. With minimal funding and little state support, a brave, pretty, esoteric Thai cinema has slowly emerged. Patiparn Boontarig –the assistant director of Manta Ray, a favourite from the 2018 Venice Film Festival, and Anatomy of Time, another Venice selection from 2021 – is part of this vanguard. His dreamy debut feature is a queer film emerging from a nation where LGBTQ rights are politically contentious. Set in a Southern Thai town – where traditional Buddhist and Islamic communities live side-by-side – Solids by the Seashore is a thoughtful, textured film. The culture clash between the two communities runs analogous to environmental concerns. High tides have eroded the once-sandy beach. Artificial rock sea walls now define the shoreline. A slow, blossoming romance emerges between two young women: Shati, a local Muslim woman from a conservative family, and Fon, an activist and artist. Their relationship is framed by traditional and forbidding tales from Shati’s grandmother, stories that finally coalesce into supernatural, magical realist happenings. Meteorites fall from the sky; the sea level rises.
This is a unique, and stratified film that, unlike the beach at the heart of the story, keeps yielding another level under its tender same-sex love story. The film was named best film at the Busan Film Festival last year and looks to be the start of a very special career.
(Tara Brady)