Bangkok Nites

Katsuya Tomita returns to compete at the 3 Continents Film Festival five years after the construction sites and deconstruction of identities of Saudade. In this new opus, we enter the “paradise” of Thailand via its greatest tourist attraction: prostitution. It is in a Bangkok brothel in Thaniya Street that Luck, the establishment’s top worker, meets Ozawa, a former client (played by the filmmaker) and a Japanese Defence Army veteran. The couple’s future is tied to the country’s socio-economic asynchrony, which the filmmaker ambitiously highlights by the network of interactions he depicts. A refuge for Japanese interests in search of a new Eldorado, the migration of young rural women to the Thai capital, the memory of French imperialist domination and the Japanese occupation during World War II, and the vestiges of the more recent use of the country as a US rear base during the Vietnam War… Tomita envelopes the ingredients of this Thai joint to take us on an absurd present-day trip through a globalisation seen through personal destinies. Aisha Rahim