At the core of “Regretfully At Dawn”’s masterfully composed shots of serene, rural plains and sublime human encounters lies a journey of acceptance for the changing seasons of life. Thai writer-director Sivaroj Kongsakul‘s sophomore feature is a thoroughly delicate and silently wrenching tale on the shifting bonds between an elderly war veteran and his young granddaughter, each rediscovering the world through their own eyes. Recently competing under San Sebastian International Film Festival’s New Directors Section, and now making its run at Busan International Film Festival and San Diego Asian Film Festival, the arthouse drama tows an uneven tone, but nevertheless boasts evocative and heartfelt performances, delivering an experience of time that is bittersweet, yet hopeful.
Regretfully at Dawn is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival
Sequestered in a quiet village town, Yong (Surachai Juntimatorn) raises his granddaughter Xiang (Machida Sutthikulphanich), accompanied by their loyal pet dog Rambo. They live out an undisturbed and wholesome life in their gardenhouse, but new instability gradually threatens Yong’s created haven. Yong’s veiled past as a soldier provides hints to his penchant for pensive introversion and desire for serenity, breeding a wholesome Walden-esque desire to build a treehouse in his yard, from which to gaze upon and momentarily forget the world.
Meanwhile, Xiang’s gifted nature brings her closer to her Teacher Mary (Sikharin Langkulsen), a traveled woman afflicted with a loneliness similar to Yong’s, but who encourages Xiang to seek herself abroad instead. The tide of time comes inevitably, and Yong and Xiang must decide their own paths.
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Perhaps unfortunately and unfairly, the loose premise surrounding time and memory is one that is decidedly commonplace in the Southeast Asian arthouse formula. With regard to plot, this comparison remains superficial, but it surely does not bode well for “Regretfully At Dawn” to run a similar construction with measured pacing, reminisces of a turbulent national past muddled with sleepy disenchantments, late afternoon wanderings and minute glimpses of the afterlife. Still, the aforementioned tropes carry a long history in placing Southeast Asian arthouse cinema on the map, owing to its endearing effect and intense potential when paired with the right nuances. However, in this case, these parallels do risk bringing some of the weaker, scripted dramatic explorations to the fore.
Against an austere film lexicon, the dialogue strangely flits between expected naturalism and a jarring intensity betraying cursorial exposition. The long runtime also presents a multitude of disparate subplots, namely Yong’s tumultuous family conflicts and the odd, visually mismatched dream sequence, that struggle to coalesce without the audience’s own mental nudgings.
These experiments can end up taking attention away from the best aspect of the film: the earnesty of the story and its characters, and an intriguing, understated motif of cross-culturalism. This motif comes through in Teacher Mary’s immigrant past, as well as a repeated love song for Thailand’s military aid to South Korea during the Korean War, a token of friendship and camaraderie. Its role in the film is less a political one, but a reflection of the human connections we continue to make despite repeated despair and loneliness. A hope that Xiang will learn for the first time as she leaves the nest to seek independence, but also something Yong, and all of us, must learn again and again, in order to carry ourselves through decades of life.
In the same vein, it is Kongsakul and his cast’s most humanist touches that brings us furthest. Juntimatorn and Sutthikulphanich carry an irrefutable connection on screen as single parent and daughter, their affections communicated with mundane ease, often without heavy handed words. Their bond is strongly felt from the onset, an anchor for the succinct story’s emotional build to a bittersweet third act.
Most strikingly of all, Kongsakul proves himself adept with a sensitivity for punctuating his script with serendipitous moments, like when a journalist and Mary bond as they huddle, struggling to light a cigarette against gusts of wind. One can never deny the timeless and quaint pleasure in witnessing these gestures unfold on screen. A pure effect of the moving image of reality. While “Regretfully At Dawn” might struggle in the throes of formulaic filmmaking, it also bolsters itself repeatedly with a sincere humanity. A personal touch is what will set it apart.
