Reflective Encounters

“Stillness dictates the mood in Pom Bunsermvicha’s Lemongrass Girl. which is no surprise considering it was conceived and shot on the set of Thai master Anocha Suwichakornpong’s contemplative latest film, Come Here. From the pause of prayer to a scrunched face lost in thought, to the frozen bodies on a film set during a take, the pressure of an unchanging landscape behind them threatens to burst.

That’s why Thai crews have the tradition of sending a virginal girl to bury lemongrass upside down in the open sky, to ward off rain. The ‘lemongrass girl’ is a role of subjugation, receiving the brunt of abuse and flippancy from her colleagues. “Sure, a man can do it. If he wears a skirt!’ scoffs one crew member, leaving a young production manager to enact this superstition alone. But Lemongrass Girl is not an example of ‘Slow Cinema’. Instead, like all good social realism, the character has one objective that shines a light on an entire culture. As her quest is intercut with footage from the film set, Bunsermvicha presents the audience with a problem: if the filmmaking practices that produce skillful and arresting work continually rob workers of agency, then is the cinema ritual itself inherently harmful?”

— Ben Flanagan