Director’s Statement

Lemongrass Girl explores the complex process of putting myth-making into practice, through a fictional depiction of an age-old superstition unfolding on the stage of a film set. The cast and crew play themselves, performing their own realities and mimicking the idiosyncrasies of Thai film set culture, including the nomination of a lemongrass girl.

Being the lemongrass girl on a film set means being put in a position devoid of any agency or power. Your perception hinges upon fundamentally implacable forces of nature. You become an object of routine ridicule and light-hearted humiliation, whether or not it rains.

Lemongrass Girl is set within the making of another fiction film. It presents two intertwining narratives: on the one hand, it is a fictional telling of the story of the lemongrass girl, but on the other, it is a factual documentation of Anocha Suwichakornpong’s film set during the making of Come Here. As Lemongrass Girl unfolds, the two narratives begin to peel away from one another.

At one point in the film, filmmaking overtakes myth-making almost entirely. The lemongrass girl disappears from view, referred to only by the cast and crew as they continue their work on set. It becomes apparent that her own belief in the superstition does not matter. The show must go on, regardless of whether she acts the part and plants the lemongrass. The act of filmmaking must continue, with or without her. Lemongrass Girl is a story about losing control of one’s own narrative.

It explores how harassment and subjugation are built into the most mundane aspects of Thai society, and how its effects have the power to push women to the point of self-exclusion and self-erasure. In a culture where the concept of virginity is constantly and casually put to the test, truth becomes subjective and stories, including our story of the lemongrass girl, become indistinguishable from reality.