Irish Film Institute -SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY

SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY

Director:

105 minutes| Thailand-France-Austria| 2006| Subtitled| Colour| 35mm


Structured in two halves riddled with teasing correspondences, Apichatpong’s film sketches moments in the lives of two hospital doctors; the central characters are based on his own parents, before they married, but the film is nothing like a piece of imagined family history. Part One is set in a country hospital and focuses on a female doctor Toey, who is distracted from her work by memories of meetings with an orchid collector. We also see a singing dentist forming an intense bond with his patient, a Buddhist monk. Part Two is set in an urban, high-tech hospital and focuses on newly-employed ex-army doctor Nohng as he explores the premises and meets various colleagues and patients – such as the doctor who hides liquor in the prosthetic limb store and the dangerous young man who has suffered carbon monoxide poisoning. This Buddhist-minded film invites us to reflect on time, memory, place and the attraction of opposites. Often funny, always mysterious.

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