Brother of the Year

What a peculiar release this is: a Thai film that played its native land back in May and appears to have been picked up by an Australian distributor (though it does not appear on their website) that also booked it in some North American theaters with Chinese subtitles. Based upon what I saw at the 6:50pm show on Friday, it's not a great strategy, as the audience was just me until three or four other people came in as previews were starting to run. Considering that this is the first Thai movie I've seen get this sort of quick release, I wonder if there's not a real audience for Thai movies or if it just takes a few of these things being released for word to get out that these movies occasionally play for the Thai community to come out.

It's a bit odd to see something so utterly mainstream from Thailand, though - most of what we get in the U.S. is art-house stuff from Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Wisit Sasanatieng (though his stuff hasn't made it across that Pacific much in the last decade and holy crap they both have parts in an anthology film this year), maybe some martial arts, and always looking great, with even the likes of Bad Genius having slick cinematography. Admittedly, it's a big example of how movies used to get filtered through festivals and art-house distributors so that most of us didn't necessarily get a chance to see what folks in other countries were actually watching.

I do kind of wonder how this particular movie winds up getting this distribution and booking, though - it's not Bad Genius in terms of quality, so I wonder if it's a matter of a couple of the cast members being pop stars. It's awfully innocuous otherwise, but I gather something has to be first. Hopefully it won't be the last.

Nong Pee Teerak (Brother of the Year)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 July 2018 in AMC Boston Common #15 (first-run, DCP)

The back end of Brother of the Year introduces a ton of new background characters we haven't seen before as it moves from Bangkok to the countryside, and it's kind of strange that I often felt like I knew where they were coming from more than the main characters, who actually go and explain themselves early in the movie. That's not to say that the main cast is bad at all, but that they are not as well-served by the story as they deserve, and it makes for a movie that's good enough to watch but not quite up to its potential.

It first introduces the audience to Chut (Sunny Suwanmethanont), a Bangkok advertising executive in his mid-twenties who has been happily living a player's life while his younger sister Jane (Urassaya Sperbund) has been attending college in Japan for the past four years. When she returns to the house their mother (Anchuleeon Buagaew) arranged for them to share a bit early, they're immediately reminded why they drive each other insane: To Jane, Chut is a gross, irresponsible jerk who only acts like a big brother when it comes to intimidating her boyfriends; Chut sees Jane as an obnoxious know-it-all who can never do wrong and got him saddled with a terrible nickname back in school. So, naturally, she immediately gets a job at one of his company's clients and starts dating her co-worker and his contact Moji (Nichkhun), thus bringing their sibling rivalry into a new arena.

That's not a terrible situation, especially since director Vithaya Thongyuyong and his three co-writers are willing to let Jane be a little harsh at times, but there's almost always something about the situation that doesn't quite seem right: Every push to get Jane and Moji together feels a bit too heavy-handed, without nearly enough passion on display to make it work, while the first scene with Jane and Chut in the same conference room seems to jump to the siblings cruelly lashing out a little too quickly. Some of the most interesting moments come toward the end, when Jane is having misgivings about the path she's choosing, but the film hasn't done much to set up her comments about how living in Japan as a foreigner is stressful, for example. It's an utterly believable thing for her to be concerned about, but the film has only given the audience momentary glimpses that she would be.

Full review on EFC