This review may contain spoilers
What goes around, comes around!
This movie was made in 2013 and it shows: the Thai BL industry was only starting to explore the market and the budgets were limited but creativity was there.There are three seemingly independent stories: the first one about a high school couple exploring their burgeoning feelings for each other, the second is a story of a gay influencer couple who are being stalked and the third one is about a small hotel owner falling for one of his guests. The ending surprisingly connects all three stories together. And therefore explains the title because I must admit I could not figure out why the movie had this title while I was watching it! All comes to those who wait!
They were directed by three different directors and you can tell. The first story looks like a high school project, badly filmed and acted, all over the place. The story about discovering one's own sexuality and acting upon it, is told well and though it looks messy, there are no red flags!
The second story is somewhere between a comedy and a horror, not really knowing what it wants to be. It also briefly touches upon the ugly side of intensive social media presence. What goes around....The filming is ugly though smoother than the first film.
The third story was the best in terms of storytelling as well as filming. It was polished, flowed naturally and there were more feeling involved. It is a story of a hotel owner looking after his bedridden boyfriend who suffers from an unknown sickness and is feeling miserable. One day a guest comes to stay in his hotel bringing back the laughter, joy and happiness in his life. He is so sorely tempted.
The quality of the movie grows as it progresses: if you manage to watch the first story without dropping it, you will end up loving this movie in spite of all its flaws. Keep in mind it is a low budget movie made 10 years ago and you should forgive them for some amateurish looking scenes!
I wanted to add cast and crew but they are not known to MDL so you can find them here:
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/362535-timeline?language=en-US
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ACTING/CAST: All very cute actors and they do a good job though. Wish they kissed better...
MUSIC: The copy I watched had some audio problems so I can't grade this.
REWATCH VALUE: I'm not planning on it but hope to see the sequel soon.
OVERALL: Kinda slow and confusing but it was nice watching the romantic BL scenes.
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So, yes, I don't mind the wonky audio quality or how the change between scenes is often less than smooth. I can focus on how the actors do their best (and mostly succeed) and on the interesting camera angles.
What I do mind is if the script is not good. You don't need a high budget to write a good script -- you need a vision. And I think this is where the weakness of this film lies.
The three stories are very good -- on their own. The shy and confused boys experiencing their first love feels very grounded in reality, the close-ups and the wonkiness of the camera work support the viscerality of the story. The second changes genres -- from slice-of-life to horror: And this, too, has interesting lighting and camera angles, and is quite well written, with somewhat of an open end even. And the third returns to a more sensitive topic, and this screenplay makes us feel for all three men in just twenty minutes.
In the last few minutes, the script tries to tie the three storiess together -- but ultimately fails. There's a theory in the comments on kisskh, but the mental twisting it requires to make it work (and even then there are too many details that just don't fit) makes me think that these originally were three seperate stories, maybe even sperate projects.
letterboxd lists three directors for this project, and the difference in styles in the three stories indicate that each one was directed by one director. I suspect that they only noticed at the end of their work that they maybe should try to make the stories into one, which is why things don't really fit together.
In my view, they did their project a disservice by doing so. Each of the stories is not bad on its own; this could have been a simple omnibus. Each of the stories shows a different age in life already (teenagers, young adults, adults). The Thai title เพราะรัก...ไม่สิ้นสุด "Because Love ... never ends" would make a perfect starting point for a journey through the stages of life; just choose some middle-aged actors for the third story, and you already have it.
The three directors chose to do differently, but I don't think it works well enough.
Was it good?
Each of the stories were not bad for an indie production. The whole doesn't make sense, unfortunately.
Did I like it?
If I pretend that the stories are independant from each other, then yes.
Who would I recommend it to?
To those who want to peek into the history of Thai gay cinema. Not to BL fans who are used to recent productions and want everathing to have the same production quality.
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I thought there were 3 separate stories but I think I was wrong. The transition from the first story to the second story was quite quick as well. The screen just turn into black and tadaaa a new story was set in place. I somehow watched this film before but I can't really remember if I really did saw it before. After watching the second story it came to my realization that I indeed watched it before. The big twist was in the end when it turned out that the characters in the story was the adult version of the two main characters in the first film. I was just not able to comprehend if the second story were connected to the first and third or was is independent from both stories. But it was quite a good film.\
CAST/ACTING:
The actors on the first story were quite mediocre in terms of acting but they did well. Among three stories I guess no one would question me if I would say that the second story bears the most emotional plot but I think the actors were not suitable to each other. Among the three stories what I like most was the third one because of the story. The acting skill was good as well.
MUSIC:
Honestly speaking my copy for this movie was not that good and the music was greatly affected because of it. So I don't have much to say in this part. :-(
REWATCH VALUE:
I think watching it once was enough but as what I have said I accidentally watched it again but I guessed it would never happen again. :-)
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