Blissfulluy Yours : City, Forest and Skin Cream
Translated and edited from Thai to English via Chat GPT
Starting from a conversation in the examination room, the doctor attempted to take the patient’s medical history in order to determine why the rash on his body was not improving. However, the two women who brought the patient spoke on his behalf the entire time. They applied various creams to the patient, instead of using the cream prescribed by the doctor, while the young male patient just sat there with a smile on his face. The doctor eventually had to request that the patient speak for himself, but the two women continued to speak on his behalf. In reality, their goal was to obtain a medical certificate, but the doctor refused to provide it because the patient had not brought his ID card. Despite being familiar with the patient, the doctor would not make an exception. During the conversation, the doctor discussed topics such as sleeping pills and apartment rentals.
The following patient was a father with his daughter, and he was starting to lose his hearing. He complained to the doctor about a screeching noise in his hearing aid. The daughter explained that her father had turned the volume on the TV up too high. When she tried to lower the volume, she was scolded, and when she tried to raise it for her father, he said it was too loud. They argued in front of the doctor, and one person suggested that they shouldn’t have had a daughter while another said that the father was just being irritable and needed a new device. The doctor acted as a mediator and listened to their conversation.
This is the opening scene from the movie “Blissfully Yours,” directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The movie depicts the delightful afternoon of Min, a young illegal immigrant, his girlfriend Rung who works in a factory, and Auntie Orn, a middle-aged woman who is a friend and caretaker to both of them.
Apichatpong’s gaze is often drawn to the countryside, cities, and villages of Thailand. Under his watchful eye, they take on a wondrous, mysterious, and quiet quality, and the unremarkable conversations of the people create a unique, comical, and relaxed atmosphere. At the same time, he sheds light on the spirit world that holds great influence, where ghosts are inseparable from life itself. Similarly, the memories of the people collide with the nation’s traumatic history. In a film that appears to tell nothing, Apichatpong’s exquisite observation captures everything and projects it beautifully onto the screen.
Apichatpong’s films challenge the ‘common sense’ of Thailand as a democratic space by equating medical and military authority as a regulatory oversight that dominates the field of what can be thought, said, heard, and expressed in any key sequence. At the same time, the emphasis on everyday practices of care and connection provide a bottom-up means of redressing the nation’s contemporary organization. This disagreement is key to understanding the types of authority in Apichatpong’s films as it shifts between caretakers, doctors, military personnel, monastic officials, factory bosses, low-angled shots of statues amid the urban landscape, and the people who personalize the political*1
Noah Viernes, a film scholar, argues that playfulness is a recurring theme in Apichatpong’s films. He always challenges authority and the use of power by social institutions, particularly the military and medical establishments. These institutions function as tools of state control, dictating people’s physical and national lives with near-absolute power. In his work, Apichatpong populates the natural world with characters such as doctors and soldiers, alongside spirits, mother goddesses, and local legends. His films suggest the existence of two distinct types of states: the formal and inflexible government and a supernatural state, governed by gods and ghosts, which villagers use to negotiate with the former.
In the opening scene of the film, we witness the authority of the medical institution exerted through the physical examination of the body, involving pressing and probing. The negotiation between Orn and the authority for medical certification, which holds the same status as state-approved certification, proves to be futile, uncovering a hierarchy within the medical profession or the notion that some doctors may consider themselves superior to their patients. Even the second patient. The doctor requires minimal words, but a simple suggestion can quickly intervene, assess and regulate the relationship between a father and daughter. In contrast, the authority of the medical institution appears to be confined to the clinic setting, as it expires with the expiration of the cream, and a new authority emerges when the patient schedules a visit with the doctor. Therefore, we can infer that the first half of the film depicts a battle/negotiation between the doctor’s prescribed cream and the homemade remedy.
The use of force to restrain people is not limited to clinics. It also occurs in government offices and factories that the characters in the film visit. For example, when Orn visits her husband to complain about the lack of medical certificates, Min is harassed by a young government official. Later, when they visit a factory, Min stays outside and sits with the security guards, who are also foreign laborers. Meanwhile, the manager calls Rung to discuss the issues of not allowing Min to return and taking a half-day leave from work.
Rung and Min have become symbols of nameless, powerless, and faceless workers whose ability to live a full life is severely limited in almost every aspect. Their pursuit of happiness is based on breaking rules, as they are controlled by their work schedule, work permits, and meager wages. There is no way for them to express their true selves in the workplace, where they are seen only as numbers or as replaceable labor. The only way they can escape this control and find a ‘space’ where they can be themselves, find pleasure, and breathe freely is by breaking rules (stopping work without permission), deceiving (faking medical certificates), or running away (going on a picnic in the forest). This ‘space’ provides them with an opportunity to find joy and breathe freely without being under anyone’s control. In the latter half of the film, the story unfolds solely in the forest.
We can divide this movie into two parts. The first part is “the city,” which is a space controlled and regulated by the state, both visibly and invisibly. In this part, we have Min, an undocumented foreign worker, and Rung, a factory girl from a lower-class background. Meanwhile, Orn is a kind of intermediary figure with ties to the state, but her status is insecure because she is just a “government official’s wife” with no particular high rank.
Orn serves as a go-between for Min and the doctor, as well as for Rung and the factory manager. However, she doesn’t have much agency herself. Ar is a negotiator who speaks for those who cannot speak, but she helps because she has her own desires and resentments. She helps while also taking advantage of both Min and Rung at the same time.
The film hints at Orn’s sexual desires. both in terms that the state accepts, such as for reproduction and outside the acceptance of the State is the desire for the self of the desire itself. In this sense, the forest that becomes the border of desire is indeed an area of equal affection.
In the latter half of the story, when the character enters the forest, it is revealed that the forest is not just any forest, but a borderland between Thailand and Myanmar. Therefore, The forest also possesses both the vulnerability points of internal state power and external national identity
When Min entered the forest, his suppressed body was exposed. Min took off his shirt and pants, leaving him almost naked in the forest, making him an object of desire for Rung and Orn. In the city, Min was just sickly skin, an unpleasant worker, and an unrecognized body. However, in the forest, Min became a body that was exploited and coveted to the fullest extent. We saw his back, chest, and even his genitals.
Not only was his body affected, but his voice was as well. Whenever Min was quiet or spoke, his voice was muffled in his throat and sometimes barely audible. In the non-diegetic world of the film, cinema became another type of forest, a space at the fringes of state power where Min could speak his own language through subtitles and drawings. He recounted his experience of learning the Thai language and the possibility of starting a family on the other side of the forest. In this setting, the audience had the chance to observe without being noticed and listen to the sound of Min’s voice.
In Thai, the film is titled ‘Sud Saneha’ which translates to ‘The End of theBliss’. If Min was the embodiment of Rung and Orn’s desire, the word ‘Bliss’ in the title carries a negative connotation with regards to privacy. It refers to something that the state cannot control — a form of self-gratification that may not be beneficial and can lead to uncontrollable, morally questionable actions. The word “End “ can be translated in two ways. It can mean the ultimate destination or endpoint, but at the same time, it can also mean reaching only this far, without reaching the ultimate destination.
The bliss of Rung and Orn seems to mean the latter more when Orn get lost and has sex with another man in the forest, where even gender seems fluid. The man was a government official who had previously expressed desires for both young men and middle-aged women. Orn did not like him because he had previously interfered with her happiness with Min. He had also tried to approach Min before, but in the ‘end’ , Orn and he ‘ended’ up having each other instead of Min. However, when his motorcycle was stolen, he left while Orn’s ‘bliss’ still not yet ended.
At the same time, Orn’s arrival created an obstacle to Min and Rung’s happiness. While Rung may have engaged in oral sex with Min, their bliss was disrupted when Orn joined them. In this scene, all three of them are playing in the water, with Min’s body floating above the stream, while Orn and Rung apply their own cream. Whether intentional or not, the scene evokes the imagery of “Ophelia,” a renowned painting that depicts the beauty of nature at its finest. Similarly, the film captures the beauty of the forest — the light filtering through the leaves, the changing light and shadows as clouds move through the sky, and the sparkling stream. The forest transforms into both a dreamland and reality — a borderland without limits of space and time.”
In the final scene of the film, the camera focuses on Orn as she lies and sobs, no longer serving as a bridge for anyone. She appears to have been discarded as a surplus part, left alone, with her desires unfulfilled and her intimacy with others disrupted, whether in the city or in the forest. On the other side of the stream, Rung gradually falls asleep, holding Min’s penis while surrounded by the sounds of the forest and the stream. The film allows ample time to observe Rung’s release from the oppressions that had burdened her intimacy , her bliss.
*1 The Politics of Health in the Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul by Noah Viernes
https://www.academia.edu/7426639/The_Politics_of_Health_in_the_Films_of_Apichatpong_Weerasethakul
