BEWARE OF GHOSTS
In Mongdal, Lee Chae-Yeon plays a school principal and mother to a psychotic son who is obsessed with a new girl in town, and she is ready to indulge his darkest whims and desires out of love.
“Her intense love and attention for the son actually originates from the lack of love she received from her husband,” said the actress. She prepared for the role by reflecting on the love and attention she received from her own parents.
Lee Chae-Yeon also shared what it was like to work with her director.
“He follows emotions in every scene that he shoots very closely,” she said. “Whenever the character is angry, he’ll be equally upset. And whenever the character is sad, he’ll be even sadder than the character. It kind of scared me sometimes during the shoot but it did help me a lot to get into the role.”
Next, we met with Thailand’s own indie maestro Pen-ek, who shared his experience wandering into the television scene for the first time.
His past works such as Last Life In The
Universe and, most recently, Samui Song have all been feature films. His Pob story is in black and white. He said it allows the audience to focus solely on the story and characters, without colours distracting them.
Pob, a well-known Thai cannibalistic ghost, finds new life in Pen-ek’s story when the undead somehow get tangled up with an obnoxious American and a news reporter. The director used no CGI and opted instead for a classic mirror trick like the one performed in 1920s for Nosferatu to portray his pob.
Previous portrayals of pob onscreen would usually see the story in rural areas, with a familiar image of an old auntie — also a pob — chasing everyone around comically.
Pen-ek’s Pob instead carries his signature sardonic humour, while also serving as a commentary on Western dominance, Thai feelings of inferiority, and reflecting on the changing landscape of cities like Bangkok becoming metropolitan.
“When a person becomes a ghost, it’s like time doesn’t exist for them. When they’re dead they don’t count the months, years and hours anymore. And then when the ghost encounters a foreigner, he’s shocked. The world has changed a lot since he’s died.”
Everything may change, but ghosts are timeless. And now a Thai ghost crashes into a farang. It is indeed a new generation. HBO Asia’s Jessica Kam believes the themes — from mothers to social commentary — being showcased and reflected in the series will find their resonance across the region, despite certain cultural differences specific to each country.
“I was surprised to see, out of six episodes, four to five of them have a very powerful mother. That maybe telling us something about Asian tiger moms, right? Things like that, things that we could relate to, but at the same time we are fascinated by seeing what’s happening in other countries,” she said.