Sight&Sound - 05.2020

REVIEWS

74 | Sight&Sound | May 2020

little-seen spot invites its destruction.

In Krabi, 2562 the damage has already

been done. At the centre of the film is a girl,

Tarn (Primrin Puarat), who acts as a tourist

guide – she chaperones the location scout

about and, as an English speaker, is recruited

to help a visiting American couple struggling

to order lunch. She offers to take her location

scout client to ‘James Bond Island’ – it appears

in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) – and

to Phi Phi Island, the site of Danny Boyle’s The

Beach (2000), the shoot for which was accused of

doing grievous damage to the local ecosystem.

Tarn is a professional ‘local’, seen conducting

business, arranging with a rural beekeeper to bring

tourists through, and offering her folklore heritage

as part of the authentic experience. Meanwhile,

the poplore of the 20th century is fast on the wane

• in a crucial scene in an abandoned cinema, the
  former projectionist discusses round-the-clock
  screenings in the old days when “cinema was the
  only form of public entertainment”. A shot of the
  empty theatre a-flutter with circling bats, however,
  doesn’t feel like another clichéd commentary
  on the Death of Cinema. For in a film where
  Neanderthals still walk the earth, there can be
  no such thing as extinction, and anything dying
  must already be in the process of being reborn.

Thailand’s scenic seaside Krabi region, the stone age

and present day, melded in a mixture of documentary

and fiction. Schoolchildren recite a paean to the

Thai king. A woman who identifies herself as a film

location scout arrives by ship, to be greeted by a tour

guide, Tarn. An aged ex-boxer discusses his life. At a

beachfront commercial shoot, an actor dressed as a

Neanderthal encounters an actual Neanderthal, who

returns to his cave to cook a fish over a spit with his

mate. The location scout visits Phra Nang Cave, as Tarn

explains the myth of its origins and the fertility shrine

it houses. The location scout visits the boxer. A team

in hazmat suits scours a park, their search possibly

connected with the location scout’s disappearance

during a visit to a shuttered cinema; the caretaker

and former projectionist talks to the camera. The

commercial crew have a karaoke outing. Tarn helps a

vacationing American couple to order lunch, and directs

them to Phra Nang Cave, where they take a selfie. In

their cave, the Neanderthals wait out a rainstorm.

Producers

Maenum Chagasik

Ben Rivers

Anocha

Suwichakornpong

Directors of

Photography

Leung Ming Kai

Ben Rivers

Editor

Aacharee Ungsriwong

Art Directors

Parinda

Moongmaiphol

Danai Pasingchob

Dubbing Mixer

Philippe Ciompi

Costume Designers

Munyapa Waenpetch

Nato Sato

©Electric Eel

Films Co., Ltd

and Urth Films

Production

Companies

A film by Ben

Rivers and Anocha

Suwichakornpong

Electric Eel Films,

Urth Films

In co-production

with Anti-Worlds

In association with

V.S. Service

4 A 4 Productions

Produced at The

Film Study Center

Harvard University,

Harvard University

with support of LEF

Moving Image Fund

Produced in

association with

the Center for

Independent

Documentary

Executive Producers

Meng Xie

Wan Sophonpanich

Andy Starke

Cast

Siraphun

Wattanajinda

nameless woman

Arak Amornsupasiri

actor

Primrin Puarat

local guide

Lieng Leelatiwanon

projectionist

Atchara Suwan

female neanderthal

Nuttawat Attasawat

male neanderthal

Oliver Laxe

commercial director

In Colour

[1.78:1]

Subtitles

Distributor

Anti-Worlds Releasing

One million years BC: Arak Amornsupasiri

Credits and Synopsis

Reviewed by Hannah McGill

The notion of clashing artistic sensibilities – fluid,

impressionistic Western painting techniques

versus the static formality of traditional Chinese

court portraiture – provides a fitting backdrop for

a French-Chinese co-production that itself feels

mired in uncertainty about how to tell its story. A

late addition to the Cannes competition back in

2017, this lavishly mounted period melodrama,

shot and directed by Charles de Meaux, sees

headstrong, jealous young Empress Ulanara (Fan

Bingbing) commission a daring portrait from

French court painter and Jesuit priest Jean-Denis

Attiret (Melvil Poupaud). Having hoped only to

distinguish herself from the Emperor’s other

romantic interests, Ulanara instead finds herself

seduced by Attiret’s patient, scholarly attentions.

Attiret, in turn, comes to query his entire faith,

becoming unmoored not only by the beauty

of his subject but by growing cynicism about

competing ideologies and power structures.

Both lead actors work conspicuously hard

in their roles: Fan imbues Ulanara with a

quicksilver mix of diva hauteur and childlike

neediness, while Poupaud not only speaks

screeds of Mandarin, but reins in his customary

seductiveness to embody a man dedicated to

expressing sensuality only through his art. An

awkward narrative structure, however, in which

the painting sequences are eked out but much

other plot development occurs offscreen, gives

the drama a distant, static quality and, despite the

actors’ investment, the characters lack flesh and

blood. Since Ulanara and Attiret are never alone

together, and for the most part seem quite irritated

by each other, the painting sessions don’t achieve

the build-up of tension that the narrative requires;

Ulanara has to tell us, via the off-putting gimmick

of a clumsily constructed encounter with a

sympathetic ghost-empress, that she’s attracted

to Attiret. Visual lushness is as conspicuous by

its absence as sexual heat: although great care

and attention has been invested in the look of

the film, particularly on the level of make-up,

jewellery and other decoration, objects, outfits

and characters feel lined up and displayed,

rather than the film achieving a powerful

aesthetic identity of its own. Just as Ulanara

The Lady in the Portrait

People’s Republic of China/France 2016

Director: Charles de Meaux

Certificate 15 107m 47s

Sitting pretty: Fan Bingbing