Midnight My Love Review

Jokmok stars as Sombati, a solitary man who barely speaks a word while working the midnight shift driving a cab. He lives alone, eats alone, has barely any human contacts. When a fellow cabbie asks why he doesn’t carry a cell phone he replies that he “wouldn’t know who to call.” Sombati’s primary contact with the outside world is his car radio, constantly tuned to the same old fashioned AM radio station. He listens voraciously, losing himself in the radio soap operas and other programming – at one point kicking a noisy fare out of his cab for talking over a favorite soap – but is particularly fond of the late night oldies music show, frequently writing in to spill his soul to the DJ.

Sombati’s life changes when he meets Nual, a young woman forced to work in a high end brothel in Bangkok to support her family in their far distant village. The beautiful young woman is slipping into a deep depression when Sombati gives her a ride late one night and, perhaps sensing a kindred spirit, she arranges for Sombati to be her regular driver. Before long the pair are stopping for meals together and clearly are oh so tentatively falling in love.

Through the first half of the film Midnight My Love plays as a simple, delicate love story between two lost souls on the fringes of society. The film is beautifully shot and edited, Jokmok shows a shocking ability to communicate volumes with only a glance, and there is this lurking sense of fantasy in the background, both in the beauty found in the regular world around them and in Sombati’s daydreaming habit of inserting himself directly into his beloved radio soaps. The film has a beautifully light touch, all nervousness and desire and surprising, delicate grace notes before a surprising development at the mid point reminds us that this is the real world and in the real world people have histories and happiness is seldom allowed to flourish without trial. Surprisingly, the ‘real world’ proves more fantastical by far than Sombati’s fantasies, although also far more ominous.

Though firmly anchored in the lives of its two leads Midnight My Love also manages to slip in a surprising amount of subtext. The disparity between rich and poor is a recurrent theme, with several criticisms of the exploitation of and discrimination against the poorer classes laced in throughout the entire running time. The overwhelmingly nostalgic tone of the picture stands as an indictment of the hollowness of consumer culture and the rush towards progress at all costs and the simple portrayal of Nual’s constant fatigue is a more powerful statement of the consequences of prostitution and sexual exploitation than any written or spoken screed could be.

Midnight My Love is a film that recognizes that what is not said, what is not shown, is frequently more powerful than what is. While it has more of a populist edge than many magic-realist films of recent vintage – 3-Iron and Last Life In The Universe both fall into this category – it is no less effective for that. Certainly one of the best Thai films of 2005 Midnight My Love is in desperate need of an English friendly DVD release and comes very highly recommended.