Nang Mai/Nymph

When my boyfriend told me that Pan-Ek Ratanaruang made a new horror movie, I was so excited. Why?

Firstly, it’s Pan-Ek’s.
If I can analogize a movie as a full language where each cutting scene is the grammar used to make a point and show a reaction or emphasize emotions, then Pan-Ek knows exactly how to rework the grammar into a poem. From two of all Pan-Ek’s movies [Last Life in The Universe and Ploy –with no proper English subtitle] I sense that Pan-Ek is the person who likes to torture his audiences with his fragments, unexplainable interpretation that leave thousand of questions and a deep sigh.

Secondly, horror movie always fascinates me. Some people always question: why bother paying to get frightened? Despite from the stupidity of getting a priced fear, I think making a real horror movie is a difficult task. Horror movies are designed to elicit fright, fear, terror, disgust or horror from viewers. In horror film plots, evil forces, events, or characters, sometimes of supernatural origin, intrude into the everyday world.
To keep audiences stayed and entertained while they are intruded is never been an easy job, I believe. and of course, avoiding the horror flicks' cliche.


So, up we went to see the movie in one of the expensive theatre [plus we bought the expensive coke too!], things we hardly do, but two reasons above are worth the money.

The forest.
Movie is started with a floating camera movement, we are intensely forced to get face to face with the mother nature we might’ve never seen before, where all the plants and the trees have the magical power.
The intrigue is appeared when we see a young woman is raped. Her scream fades in the silence of the forest. In the burbling stream of the river, Pan-Ek delivers us the forest warning, that if they wanted to, they could reject or even swallow you up whole, like the floated dead bodies of the assaulters.

Nop and Mai.
Nop is an eccentric photographer who’s got a job to take pictures of the forests. Nop somehow sees a picture of a tree in the forest with a message “don’t let the forest seduce you”. The puzzle is thrown.
Mai, Nop’s wife, is a typical beautiful urban woman who has an affair with Korn, her boss.
Both of them are going to the forest. On the way, Mai is being a busy bee, cannot get detached from her phone [somehow my boyfriend, who is Thai said, Pan-Ek is trying to criticize the modern life, from the lyric of the music that is played in the car. Something about how modern life has changed people’s life].

The hotel affair.
May is out from the room, leaving Nop sleeping alone, to secretly talk on phone with Korn. When she comes back, the door is locked, she knocks and the door is opened with Nop, weirdly is still sleeping. Mai feels a bit of anxiety, either from her reticent affair or her guilt’s apparition. She takes her sleeping pills before sleeps.

In the forest.
Mai is still busy with her phone, talking to Korn, leaving Nop alone to explore the forest. Nop gets himself absorbed by the forest, and is somehow hypnotized by one tree. He caresses the tree and slowly penetrates his head to its crevice. The day is settling down and Mai starts to worry about Nop, she finds him in the forests, and gets shock to see Nop and the tree.
As night crawls in, the intruder Pan-Ek tries to infiltrate is growing. Something is wrong with Nop. In their tent, Mai is taking her pills again, when Nop is trying to get intimate, Mai is coldly rejecting him. At down, Nang Mai seduces Nop, taking him with her.

Nang Mai.
Mai wakes up in the morning finding Nop is missing, when she calls his phone, she can only hear a deep breath. Mai asks help from the forest rangers who end up give her an amulet necklace. Mai decides to stay in forest and finds Nop, she explores the forests, finds one of Nop’s sandals. Then she gets fainted and Nang Mai is dragging her back to front of her tent.

Come back home.
Desprately, Mai comes back to town with her boss, who lies to his wife to stay with Mai. Mai feels sorry for Nop, it’s either for Nop’s disappearance or her affair. The horror is getting intense: how can a life disappear even while it is in the midst of it? Is Nop really gone?
But somehow Nop is back, more earthly, Mai finds herself relieved.

The secret of the forest.
Meanwhile the forest ranger is calling Mai about their finding. Shown in a simple fragment, a forest scavenger finds a dead body, which to him is not more than a dead animal. Apparently death is something common in the forest. Like finding a treasure, he takes the corpse’s possession. The living lives from the dead.

Disclosure.
Mai is glad but somehow, everything has changed and so has their 10 years old marriage. Both of them are aware of it, now is just a matter of who and when to divulge it. It seems like peeling off a plaster from a long-healed wound’s covered so long it dissolves with time. Leaving only the scar and unbearable frustration that cannot be articulated.

Step back.
Mai and her boss are apparently having a plan to leave each other’s spouse and get together. It isn’t easy on her boss’ wife. Love is something hard to fix once it’s broken, even though Mai bails on her affair, she finds Nop is missing again. Korn feels unsatisfied, decides to go back to the forests with Mai.

Condemn, guilt and innocence.
In the forest, Nop is making out with Nang Mai. Mai is disturbed to find Nop’s phone again answered with the deep breath. She storms out to the forests, calling for Nop with no results. When she founds the tree, she condemns her anger to the tree, she axes it with no mercy until she faints.

In the silence of the forest, inbetween dreams and reality, Nang Mai is covered by either latex or blood. Nop is taking Mai back to the tent, where Korn is asleep. He wakes up and shocked to see Mai is full of sort of red liquid, he perceives as blood. Korn and Nop are involved in a conversation that is more like the end of the trip that had no destination.

In this movie, you can forget the time frame, that I belive Pan-Ek has intended to neglect. Pan-Ek puts no cold fact in these fragments, and let us enjoy the moment when reality and imagination are vague.
They are piled up on top of each other, interlaced us a beautiful long braid that leaves lots of room for our own interpretation. How much of a comfort.

When Nop says: “What did she do to you both, why you hurt her?” Who is her? Nang Mai? Or Mai? Or Korn’s wife? These three “her” has fell victim to the conditions Pan-Ek suggests.
And as for both of the two men, Pan-Ek also mercilessly puts them in a two parallel universe where their mistakes are beyond comprehension.

If you may ask me what I catch from this long review, I’d say…the whole movie is like a phantom hour in these three main characters’ lives, trying to examine the past and probably hope to change the things they’ve done…but unfortunately, life never goes reverse…and it has no mercy, no matter how much you beg. Such a weary journey, isn’t it? I’ve told you, no? it’s Pan-ek after all…:)

"Nangmai" is rated R
Directed by Pan-ek Ratanaruang
Written by Pan-ek Ratanaruang
109 minutes