The Blue Hour

WTF? Is this tale real or an imagined reality by a disturbed teen? Are there ghosts who kill unwary swimmers in an abandoned community swimming pool? Or does being a gay teenager rattle your brains, somehow? "The Blue Room" (aka "Onthakan") isn't sure.

Thai director and co-writer Anucha Boonyawatana (along with Waasuthep Ketpetch) has made a moody, confusing, surreal and slow drama about Tam (Atthaphan Poonsawas), a kindly lad of 16 or so, who meets Phum (Oabrithi Wiwattanawarang) online and begins a forbidden tryst with him. As Tam doesn't want his family to know about his sexual orientation (let alone what these two actually do) and Pham doesn't, apparently, live with his family (he's a couple of years older than Tam), they meet clandestinely at this decaying pool, supposedly haunted by persons murdered by other ghosts. Or maybe not.

Tam's mother is concerned about his sexual proclivities, but not as much as his older brother and their father. So when the brother somehow turns up dead, then missing, in this hard-to-get-to pool, what had been a semi-interesting film about gay youth in Thailand becomes unfathomable.

This isn't to say it's uninteresting. No, beautifully shot midst a lot of blue-lens gloom, and sensitively acted, the lack of a coherent plot is what undoes it. There are gangsters in it. Stolen weapons used to kill birds out of the sky. Decaying bodies. Etc. So, while it's reasonably clear that Tam is having some very strange apparitions, and he may, indeed, be going crazy.....or there are such things as demons-in-the-pool which rattles your consciousness before sucking you down into the much with them. Either way, we should have to wonder and scratch our heads about what we are watching. Part of the job of the filmmaker is to give the viewing audience enough clues to piece together the narrative, and here the folks have failed.

For those who are attracted to Asian youth in Speedos, have at it. For the rest of us, let the film go - it's not unintelligent, necessarily, just unremarkable.

"The Blue Hour"
DVD
$19.99
www.strandreleasing.com