A graceful romantic drama from veteran Thai director Banjong Pisanthanakun, about snow festivals and temporary amnesia…
Following the move of most A-list directors in Thailand from the GTH (GMM Tai Hub) production company to the new GFH 559 after GTH was dissolved in 2015, it was only obvious that the Thai film production megahouse would again crank out cookie-cutter hits after finding it’s feet on new solid ground. Banjong Pisanthankun’s new film One Day is the result of solid Thai filmmaking, having picked up a handful of ‘best actor/actress’ awards and being nominated for more at the 26th Thailand National Film Association Awards.
One Day follows introverted (and I suspect suffering from Aspergers or some form of learning difficulty) IT office support worker Denchai (Chantavit Dhanasevi suits the role too well with his curly nerdish hair…) who has issues with his co-workers. The issue being that he’s pretty much forgetful as a person, nobody knows his name and he only gets invited to social outings through pity, but then he never makes much of an effort either (and complains repeatedly through voiceover about being hard done by…). Denchai falls in love secretly with one of his co-workers Nui (Nittha Jirayungyurn), and after spending sometime ‘getting to know her’ (I’ll be coming back to this) in the office, he pretends to be her boyfriend for one day when she gets a bout of temporary amnesia whilst on a work holiday trip in Japan
Trying to be the ‘bashful loser’ story that most audience members will watch, smile at and cheekily be swayed by, I wasn’t impressed at all. From the stalker antics of Denchai towards Nui, to his continued whining of the universe being unfair to him even though he puts little effort in, to the story being a copy and paste of most GTH film formats that have come before, I found One Day to be an unimpressive and pathetically cringey film that flies far too safe for Banjong Pisanthanakun and the GFH 559 production studios’ first film.
I’ve found lots of reviewers enamored by One Day, however that wasn’t the case for myself. All of the characters have serious failings, and the plot is repeating the format of prior flicks such as the 2010 Hello Stranger. It can pretty much be described as “Boy falls in love with Girl who finds him uncomfortable at first, they have wacky adventures in a country abroad, the ending is uncertain”. That describes most Thai romances in a nutshell, so why bother to watch One Day if it’s the same as most others? The character of Top (Theerapat Sajakul), the boss of the company, is married but takes advantage of the love of Nui. Denchai repeatedly stalks Nui by breaking into her computer to leave music songs, tidying her desk after work without permission, following her around outside of work and perfectly memorizing her routine. The only person I’ve any sympathy for is Nui, having to put up with the predatory nature (and the stalker antics of Denchai evidently being deemed acceptable through the film romanticizing his completely unacceptable actions), and yet Nui isn’t completely innocent, as she chases a married man with her affections.
To be honest, I expected more from the latest film of Banjong Pisanthanakun. One Day was the chance for production studios GFH 559 to demonstrate their uniqueness away from GTH by striking out in a new direction, and not just making the same worn shit that sells ticket sales. I know that’s exactly why One Day was great, but for once I’d love to see some variety in all these big ‘safe’ Thai blockbusters. There are some standout moments in One Day however, as it’s beautifully shot and some scenes do induce a cringing smile, however it’s not redeeming enough for me to consider the film worthwhile watching again.
This is just another copy and paste of most popular recent Thai romantic comedy/drama formulas. If you’ve seen Hello Stranger then you’ve pretty much seen One Day, if you haven’t seen it then just save your money and go watch something equally trashy like Transformers. The stalker antics of Denchai are not acceptable in this film, and I greatly dislike One Day for romanticizing the predatory nature of Chantavit Dhanasevi’s character failings for cheap laughs.