Wonderful Town (NR)

synopsis

"Wonderful Town" is a fictional story set against a real-life background. Aditya Assarat's feature debut takes place in Takua Pa, a coastal area in southern Thailand that lost more than 8,000 habitants when the Asian Tsunami struck in late 2004. Caused by a 9.3 magnitude Indian Ocean earthquake on Dec. 26, this natural disaster affected 15 countries across the globe and was responsible for the death of over 225,000 people. Three years later, Takua Pa, once the site of a thriving community, still struggles with this collective trauma. And, amidst the city's reconstruction, an architect mysteriously arrives from the cosmopolitan Bangkok. Ton, the only person from his firm willing to re-locate to this desolate place, comes to supervise one of the city's many construction sites. As he looks for a place to live, he meets Na. As such, to view "Wonderful Town" as a reaction to the Tsunami is perhaps to miss the film's larger point. Here, this traumatic natural disaster also functions as a point of departure for the film's assertions about the relationship--and many parallels--between humans and the so-called natural world.