Cannes Hidden Gem: ‘A Useful Ghost' Is a Socio-Political Parable Starring a Vacuum Cleaner
A woman dies, only to return in the form of a vacuum cleaner to stay close to, and intimate with, her husband. Yes, you read that right! Thai writer-director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's A Useful Ghost, world premiering in the Critics' Week lineup in Cannes during the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, is a ghost story but also so much more.
After Nat dies from dust pollution, her husband, March, is consumed by grief. 'His daily life is turned upside down when he discovers his wife's spirit has been reincarnated in a vacuum cleaner,' reads the synopsis for the debut feature from Boonbunchachoke, who makes his living writing for TV and has made short films (Red Aninsri; Or, Tiptoeing on the Still Trembling Berlin Wall). 'As absurd as it seems, their bond is rekindled, stronger than ever. But it is hardly to everyone's liking. His family, still haunted by the accidental death of a factory worker, rejects this supernatural relationship. To prove their love, Nat offers to clean the factory to prove herself a useful ghost, even if that means doing away with some lost souls…'
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Thai actress, influencer and model Davika Hoorne and Witsarut Himmarat star as the couple in the movie from Bangkok-based 185 Films, on which Best Friends Forever is handling international sales. The ensemble cast also includes Apasiri Nitibhon, Wanlop Rungkumjud, and Wisarut Homhuan.
The film is inspired by Mae Nak, a well-known ghost story in Thai folklore. As that story goes, a young woman had undying love for her husband. When she got pregnant, he was sent to war in the Thai army. After getting wounded, he had to be nursed back to health, while his wife and their baby died during childbirth. When the man returned home, he found his loving wife and child waiting for him, ignoring warnings from neighbors that he was living with ghosts.
'It's an iconic character in Thai popular culture, and there have been TV, theater, and other stories about it,' Boonbunchachoke tells THR. 'I'm interested in socio-political issues. So, I tried to look at this story again and look for what I could say about it. And I wondered how ghosts would exist in contemporary society. Do they need to work like a human being to earn a salary? One of the first images for me was the ghost walking into the office. It was matching the legend with the contemporary capitalist world.'
The movie is also a plea to not sweep the past under the carpet. 'In Thailand, there is so much history of small people that gets forgotten,' shares Boonbunchachoke. 'People often try to stay away from or exercise ghosts, as if trying to erase a disturbing past. But we should maybe talk more about the past and about this marginalized history, because it could return in a more malicious form. As human beings, maybe we owe ghosts something. We need to listen to them and respond to them.'
Shooting the scenes with the vacuum took all sorts of planning. 'We had two models of the vacuum cleaner,' the director explains. 'One had a motor inside so that we could remote control it. But it could just move on the ground, but could not move the hose. In regular scenes, we just decided on one of two trunk positions: heads up [or not]. But movements of the hose needed to be manually handled by three people, and then we deleted that in post-production.'
The choice of the vacuum came to Boonbunchachoke as he kept developing the story. 'Initially, I thought she'd appear as a ghost in human form,' he recalls. 'Normally, in cinema, people visualize ghosts in different forms. They just float around or don't have feet. Or they appear as a human, but translucent. Sometimes, they don't appear at all but just manifest through their voice. And in another tradition, the ghost doesn't appear at all but is invisible and moves things in your house.'
He ended up liking the idea that the ghost could be in a piece of furniture or an electrical appliance. 'The choice of the vacuum cleaner is related to a very Thai context,' Boonbunchachoke explains. 'Dust pollution is real in Thailand. People have been talking about it for 10 years or so. But 'dust' also has another meaning in [Thai] slang. When you call someone that, it means they are insignificant, like dust – they can be moved, swept up, wiped out by people with power, with authority. So, it means a human who doesn't have power to control their life.'
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