I’ll take just about any opportunity to push Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang on new viewers. His film Last Life in the Universe (my old DVD review) has some amazing, indelible images. Even when he’s not one hundred percent on point, as with Ploy (my TIFF review) he’s got great ideas flowing through his work.
So I’m thrilled that Nymph, his lastest movie, will be playing in competition soon at Cannes, which means it will likely be on the program at Toronto later this year. I’ve remained relatively ignorant about the plot (Ratanaruang’s name is all I need to be interested) but Twitch now has a good synopsis and fantastic poster. The image is way too low-res; I look forward to seeing a better quality version as it’s got a wild Clive Barker meets Little Otik thing that I love. High-res would be instant desktop background, bumping my current Lars Von Trier as anti-Hitchcock.
The synopsis: A long time ago in a forest, a beautiful young woman fell prey to two
men. Shortly thereafter, the lifeless bodies of the two attackers were
found in the nearby stream. No one knew what happened to the men or
where the woman was. Flash forward to today. Career woman May has it
all in life. Her husband, Nop, showers her with love but May has
started an affair with another married man. One day, May accompanies
Nop to the forest to take photographs of the wildlife. Deep in the
forest, Nop stumbles onto a sad looking tree and all of a sudden he
vanishes from the forest without a trace. When May thinks she had lost
him forever, Nop returns, but with a new personality…