‘One for the Road’: A trip down ex-girlfriends lane
When “Bad Genius” came out in 2017, director Baz Poonpiriya was hoping for a hit, but even he couldn’t have predicted that his film would become the most internationally successful Thai film yet, popular not just in his native Thailand but across Asia and other territories (it enjoyed several successful weeks in Philippine theaters). Only his second film, “Bad Genius” even caught the notice of celebrated auteur Wong Kar-wai, who apparently was so impressed with it that his company, Jet Tone Films, reached out to Poonpiriya and asked what else he was working on.
A few years later and we have Poonpiriya’s latest movie, “One for the Road,” a new entry in the “terminal illness/forgiveness road trip” subcategory, produced by Wong and having premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it bagged a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision. After enjoying a theatrical run in Thailand earlier this year, the film is finally available to Philippine audiences via Netflix.
In “One for the Road,” Boss (Thanapob Leeratanakachorn), a bartender/club owner in New York, is contacted by his best friend Aood (Ice Natara, who was in the Thai remake of K-drama “Voice”) and is given some bad news: Aood is dying, of the same illness that took his DJ dad, and would Boss come back to Thailand for one last road trip? When Boss arrives, the true nature of the excursion is revealed: Aood is visiting all his exes to give/receive some semblance of closure. Thus, a great opportunity to showcase a good number of locales: New York, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Korat, etc. As each ex is visited there are also flashbacks to the relationships and their dissolution, all of which seem to have taken place while Aood was living with Boss in New York, nursing Boss’ dream of opening up their own bar together.
More interesting
It also means we get some nice guest turns from Thai actresses, from Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying (of “Bad Genius” and Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s “Happy Old Year”) to Violette Wautier (“Heart Attack”) as the bartender who inspires Boss to take up the trade. Indeed, one of the trickier things about “One for the Road” is that the women tend to be more interesting than the two male leads, who have to work out their own toxic masculinity in trying to confront their messy relationship histories. With this many characters, we’re mostly given montages of carefully selected moments to encapsulate both a blooming attraction and the thorny aftermath, without much room for depth and detail. Naturally, this leads to outsize melodrama, which can be clunky and feels unearned at times. It teeters on the brink of overpowering, actually, because the story can’t resist lobbing curveballs at the audience, at the expense of balance and structure.
Visiting exes who live in cities and having flashbacks already provides an episode narrative framework, but the introduction of Wautier’s Prim in the back half comes too late for a character who ends up playing such a large role, and the size of the episodes becomes uneven, resulting in an overlong film that indulges itself a little too often.
What saves the film is that the performances are good, and the visuals are lush and sensuous, the influence of producer Wong obvious in the hues and hazy atmosphere of some choice scenes that utilizes slow motion, wide lenses and saturated colors. These dreamy qualities, as well as the odd dash or three of magical realism, suffuse the film with a warm vibe that allows one to forgive its occasional misstep into heavy-handedness. Another Wong influence seems to be a generous budget for song clearances, as “One for the Road” features a number of Western songs.
It might not be the follow-up to “Bad Genius” fans were expecting, especially with a more character-driven story as opposed to “Genius’” plot acrobatics, but “One for the Road” wears its heart on its sleeve, to a fault. It sometimes gets too drunk on its own style and emotions, but still makes for a memorable and painful dalliance with mortality, missed opportunities and, if we’re lucky, forgiveness.