Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Bookmark this pageLast Life in the Universe (2003)
Director: Pen-ek Ratanaruang
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Weltschmerz never seemed more dynamic than it does in Pen-ek's sly and seductive movie about an ex-yakuza working as a librarian in the Japanese Cultural Centre in Bangkok. Obsessive, fastidiously ordered and allergic to fish, Kenji (Asano) constantly rehearses his own suicide - he identifies with the lizard in a children's story which finds itself the last lizard on earth - until the day he witnesses a girl killed in a traffic accident during a row with her sister Noi (Sinitta). Next day he has urgent reasons to get out of town (there are two bodies in his apartment: his brother and the hitman sent to get him) and he hitches a ride with the grief-stricken Noi to her tumbledown house near Pattaya. In the few days before her departure to work as a bar girl in Osaka, he cleans up her place, inherits her car and reaches out to her to form an unexpected human bond. Hardly anything happens, but the film grips like a thriller; tone and pace, atmosphere and imagery tell voluminous stories of their own. It has Doyle's best camerawork since Happy Together and a snazzy cameo from Miike in shades and a snakeskin suit.Author: TR
Cast & crew
Director: Pen-ek Ratanaruang
Producer: Nonzee Nimibutr, Duangkamol Limcharoen, Wouter Barendrecht, Hiromi Aihara
Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Sinitta Boonyasak, Laila Boonyasak, Yutaka Matsushige, Riki Takeuchi, Takashi Miike, Thiti Phum-orn full cast
Rated: 15
Duration: 92 mins
Top Stories
Ridley Scott interview
Director Ridley Scott tells Cath Clarke why he's making a science fiction comeback
Cannes Film Festival 2012: half-time report
Dave Calhoun reports on the hits, misses and a shocking new masterpiece from Michael Haneke
What do you think?
Post your review now