Making ripples quietly in its own terrain while its Western LGBT counterpart Call Me By Your Name is still bobbing along on the crest of its popularity is Malila: The Farewell Flower. To label it a gay film is of course a reduction of what it is and how it's been hypnotizing audiences with its spiritual wisdom and beauty.
Malila: The Farewell Flower is a contemplative and soulful meditation on beauty, ephemerality and loss. The film follows late-stage former lovers Shane and Pich as they reunite to contend with Pich’s ebbing mortality. A redolent and arboreal odyssey, the film explores mortality through the lens of Buddhist philosophy and ‘Bai Sri’, a Thai white jasmine flower ornament whose creation is inextricably tied with its creation; the flowers are folded and twisted to construct the ornament, the jasmine flowers are on the cusp of destruction as they are made anew.
Malila is directed by rising star Anucha Boonyawatana, who first made her debut in Berlin with 2015’s The Blue Hour. With its hallucinatory dreamscapes and deft intermingling of the sacred and the profane, Malila bears a kindred resemblance to the work of another Thai maestro, Tropical Malady’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
The film has picked up several international film awards over the past 8 months since its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in 2017. This included the special Kim Ji Seok Award in BIFF, and the Best Director Award at the 2017 Singapore International Film Festival as well as the 2017 Kerala International Film Festival.
Malila: The Farewell Flower is a contemplative and soulful meditation on beauty, ephemerality and loss. The film follows late-stage former lovers Shane and Pich as they reunite to contend with Pich’s ebbing mortality. A redolent and arboreal odyssey, the film explores mortality through the lens of Buddhist philosophy and ‘Bai Sri’, a Thai white jasmine flower ornament whose creation is inextricably tied with its creation; the flowers are folded and twisted to construct the ornament, the jasmine flowers are on the cusp of destruction as they are made anew.
Malila is directed by rising star Anucha Boonyawatana, who first made her debut in Berlin with 2015’s The Blue Hour. With its hallucinatory dreamscapes and deft intermingling of the sacred and the profane, Malila bears a kindred resemblance to the work of another Thai maestro, Tropical Malady’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
The film has picked up several international film awards over the past 8 months since its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in 2017. This included the special Kim Ji Seok Award in BIFF, and the Best Director Award at the 2017 Singapore International Film Festival as well as the 2017 Kerala International Film Festival.
Picking up the Best Director Award at the 2017 Kerala International Film Festival
Picking up the Best Director Award at the 2017 Singapore International Film Festival
Anucha deliberating her steps on set of 'Malila'
Clearly a rising star in the independent film circuit, Anucha Boonyawatana has a distinctive voice not seen in the film circuit. With a film that deals with big questions like death, love and Buddhism, we applied the same big questions to Anucha herself and got her to share her views about romance and Buddhist philosophies. We also asked if she is afraid of death.
What inspired you to make this film?
The film is like the collection of
things I experience and adore. For Malila, It’s very personal and every
elements in the film are came from my memory. I had a chance to study Thai
flower making (Baisri) and found that it’s very pain staking. Baisri is very
beautiful but it’s also fragile and will wither soon and it made me feel the
word “absurd” and began to question about value of love and life. And once in
my lifetime, I use to be in the monkhood. I wander through forest and had to do
a lot of meditation practices. These experience make me understand the
mentality of monks and inspire me to make Malila.
What was your initial idea like? How did it evolve to become this final product we see?
At first the film will be more surreal
or magical realism. Malila is a very long time project, it should be my first
feature but back in that time, I can’t find enough money to make this film. So
I made the Blue Hour and after that so many years I’m grow older and I need
Malila to be more realistic approach. But you may sense that film still has
many dreamlike, magical and surrealism elements.
How was the experience of filming in the
jungle?
I love to film in the forest, and also
my main actor. It’s very tough but relax at the same time. Everything in the
forest is very hard to control especially for an art direction. Actually, the
real forest is extremely green color but I don’t want that green, so we try to
control the leaves like cut some leaves and fill in the dry grasses. You also have to be very brave, because
sometimes it can be dangerous and haunting like we film in the actual location
where the villagers dump dead bodies there. In that time, you have to be a
strong pillar for all of the crews.
How did you work with the actors to get them
to deliver such soulful performances?
We do a lot of workshop for their
character’s back stories, I’ll let them do improvisations for many scenes that
did not appear in the script like the scene that the first met each other, make
love, first kiss, fighting and saying
good bye and also for the scene that related to their family and society. When
they are on set they can draw the feeling from all of these memories to deliver
their performance. Apart from acting workshop, we just use a very simple and
fundamental techniques. Before we start filming I’ll let my actor walk for a
while in the location, they will feel the atmosphere and all of the senses like
wind, light, heat and some odor that emit from the location. Luckily they are
very sensitive persons, so they will use all of these feeling to create the
performance. 
Do you think the concept of Buddhism
and romance are conflicting? (because Buddhism teaches you to detach)
I don’t think that they are
conflicting, They are different ways of living and detaching can be done in
many levels. Buddhism also understand that every normal human wants love and
romance but Buddhism will teach you to aware that all of these is impermanence
and will lead you to suffering at the end.
The white Jasmine flower is beautiful
but temporary. Do you think things are beautiful only because they don't last?
I really don’t know this. In my
opinion, things like flowers are all beauty in every state from blooming to
withering.
The film has travelled to a few
countries. What were the reactions from foreign audience? Any interesting
feedback?
I think the feedback is quite different
and it’s also reflect the society of those countries. For example, in the
countries those are still not open for LGBT, there will be a question like :
why your characters have to be gay? Many people will think that LGBT film will
have to talk about fighting for rights or something very activist. So they are
very surprise that my film didn’t seem to have anything like that.
What are some of your favourite films?
favourite Thai films?
I like classic Hollywood films and also
old school Asian cinema from Akira Kurosawa and Hou Hsiao-Hsien. For Thai
film, Apichatpong’s films is my
favorite. Also the film like Mulholland Dr. and Peter Greenaway’s work.
What do you think about death? Are you
afraid to die?
I’m
always think about death. Someone has told
me that I have death drives. I always let my self to be in a very risky
situation and deathly relationships like having relationships with Hitman or
veteran soldiers. Somehow their dark world story and background interest me and
they are interested in me also. I have to say that I’m afraid to die like
everyone. It’s ultimate fear and fragile that I want to overcome and vice versa
it’s so charming and obsessive.
Interview by Koh Zhi Hao
Interview by Koh Zhi Hao
Check out the film trailer here: