Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Probably the oddest film I've seen this year, Uncle Boonmee is paradoxically one of its director's more straightforward narratives. A dying man receives visits not only from flesh and blood family but also from spirits of those long gone. It's a simple story but it doesn't give any indication of the strange beauty of the film. The living barely bat an eyelid at these visitors from another realm. Instead they all gather around the table, catching up on events. Boonmee's dead wife materialises gradually and looks just as she did when she died. His son, who vanished some time after her death, is covered in fur, with glowing red eyes. It turns out he mated with a Monkey Ghost and has found happiness in this new form. Elsewhere a bizarre digression features a princess' erotic encounter with a talking catfish (it really shouldn't work but against all odds, it does) Like the opening sequence of an errant water buffalo, are we meant to interpret this as one of Boonmee's past lives, or is it something else entirely? Part of the joy of the film is that it's left up to use to decide. The boundary between worlds is as fluid as the narrative structure. There's no denying it's a slow film but for every longeur, there's a haunting image to take away with you: those glowing red eyes watching from deep in the forest, or the final journey of Boonmee, descending through a deep cavern, passing stalagtites, cave paintings and small pale fishes in a spring. By the time the group reach a stunning glittering cave, it feels like they've gone back through time, reaching the centre of the universe.