New York Asian Film Festival 2024 (July 12-22 FLC) REVIEWS

[Chris Knipp]

CHAYANIT CHASANGAVEJ IN SUPPOSED

THANKORN PONIGSWAN: SUPPOSED (2023)

Wild for to hold

Supposed is a sort of dating app rom com involving a successful executive who meets a beautiful, younger woman via Tinder, is entranced, but can never hold her. This begins to be a telling, touching study of the attractions and dangers of such relationships. It seems to fade away a bit into little more than a music video at the end. But we must cut it some slack, since the director, Thankorn Ponigswan, died of lymphoma, at the age of 46, shortly after the film's completion and he may hot have been able to put the finishing touches on it.

The encounters of "Non" (Ananda Everingham), the Tinder-cruising businessman, and "Dear" (Chayanit Chansangavej) start via social media. She says she has been away for five months. He never gets a clear answer from her about what this means. But her teasing, wild, playful ways are entrancing. When the Korean restaurant where she wants to eat is closed, she breaks in and makes "Non" cook for her.

There is some of the life of Laotian-Australian actor Everingham in "Non," because the actor's father was an Australian photojournalist who scuba-dived to save his lover, and aa "Non" he is always taking pictures and wants to be a writer, and talks about scuba diving. "Dear" won't say what she does away from "Non." They have a sex life and things seem great except she is distant, keeps disappearing, and seems to have another involvement, while "Non" falls more and more in love with her.

"Dear" and "Non" made me think of the 16th-century English poet Sir Thomas Wyatt's famous poem "Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind," which imagines his lady love as a wild deer that he chases in vain, and concludes she is "wild for to hold, though she seem tame." He imagines a necklace around her "fair neck," "graven with diamonds in letters plain" saying "noli mi tangere," touch me not. "Dear" escapes "Non." He cannot trap her. At the end he sorts through her cancelled web page's many images and pursues her at the places she has seen and photographed.

She has said revealingly that whenever she is involved with someone she enters his world and imitates him, but so she does not know who she really is herself. With "Non," she also has begun taking a lot of pictures, as he like to do. But early in the film, we see him posing, and describing that he wears blue because he's been told it's a friendly color, and he photographs himself. He's a narcissistic male and, like so many before him, pursues an image, "Dear" with her unspoiled young face, her tempting eyes, instead of being attracted by the other woman he sleeps with briefly, who is communicative, and available: not interesting, too easy, too practical.

Supposed is a study of modern dating app romance, but winds up being such a classic love story it can be epitimized in a 16th-century poem. Chayanit Chansangavej is certainly entrancing in the role of the elusive young woman, and Ananda Everingham is a suave, able dupe, the eternal male chasing a women who is too young and too mysterious to remain in his clutches for very long. Too bad the film does't find a less pretty, less ambiguous solution, but most of the way it depicts the eternal chase beautifully. The cinematography of Vardhana Wanchuplao has a dark, distinctive look; the score by Wittawin Amornrattanasak, however obtrusive, is essential to the online, pop-culture mood.

Supposed, 100 mins., opened in Thailand Dec. 5, 2023, debuting at the Osaka Asian Film Festival Mar. 4, 2024. It was screened for this review as part of the 2024 NYAFF (Jul. 12-28).
SCHEDULE:
Sunday July 14, 3:30pm
Film at Lincoln Center
Intro with cast members Ananda Everingham & Chayanit Chansangavej