One for the Road

“One for the Road’s impeccable first half is let down by later scenes of misogyny and ableism.”

Title: One for the Road (2021)
Director: Nattawut ‘Baz’ Poonpiriya 👨🏻🇹🇭
Writers: Nattawut ‘Baz’ Poonpiriya 👨🏻🇹🇭, Nottapon ‘Kai’ Boonprakob 👨🏻🇹🇭, and Puangsoi ‘Rose’ Aksornsawang 👩🏻🇹🇭

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

—MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 3.75/5

In Thai director Baz Poonpiriya’s third feature film, One for the Road follows New York City-based bar owner Boss (Tor Thanapob) as he returns to Bangkok at the behest of his old friend Aood (Ice Natara). As it turns out, Aood has advanced leukemia and is on a mission to make amends with the folks he’d hurt during his lifetime...and he wants Boss’ help in doing so.

While the story ostensibly tracks Aood’s reunions with past girlfriends, the true journey takes place between the two friends as a mysterious rift yawns between them, brimming with words left unsaid. The first hour thrills thanks to tight plotting and authentic banter. But halfway through the film, Poonpiriya pivots away from Aood’s perspective and downshifts into the story of Boss, a narrative decision that derails momentum and burns gas on emotions that run so high, the film never recovers from its own bluster.

Specifically, the latter part of the movie reveals the uglier sides of our two protagonists as we witness them dole out emotional abuse to former girlfriends. But instead of addressing their toxic behavior, lenient writing sees Boss and Aood receive only light consequences for the way they objectify women. Frustratingly, it’s clear whose side the movie is on. By the time One for the Road bottoms out, the resolution feels overly pat and ill-gotten by its unredeemed protagonists.

But setting aside its plotting issues, one aspect of the film stays consistently wonderful: its cinematography. A fruitful collaboration with director of photography Phaklao Jiraungkoonkun, who had also worked on Poonpiriya’s previous film, Bad Genius (2017), provides drop-dead gorgeous lighting that makes its characters appear to glow from within. Jolting this softness alive, bold text stamps across the screen as cocksure as Boss shakes a martini. Bombastic editing swings and suspends time like a yo-yo casually controlled with a flick of the wrist.

Better yet, One for the Road retains the dreamy colors found in Bad Genius while pushing into darker spectrums, of evening cobalts and hazy neons that communicate the newer film’s more somber themes. Or perhaps these noir sensibilities bely the influence of Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai, under whom Poonpiriya had worked for the last three years and whose name is credited as a producer on the film. However its vibe came to be, impeccable cinematography paired with a pitch-perfect soundtrack, mournful and nostalgic, stand out as the winning features of One for the Road.

Gender: 1.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE

As soon as chaptered title cards display the handwritten names of ex-girlfriends, viewers immediately get the sense that women will surface only as symbols in Boss and Aood’s lives.

That inkling holds true. In some regards, the exes do enjoy a bit of agency; in particular, Roong (Noon Siraphun) refuses to see Aood and her decision pleasantly centers her own interests. Unfortunately, the later mishandling of Boss’ ex-girlfriend Prim (Violette Wautier) decimates any goodwill the first half of the movie might have earned.

For starters, we first hear of Prim when Aood discusses her like an object. He says to Boss, “I also wanted to return something to you.” Earlier, he’d returned various tokens to each of his exes: a pink shoulder bag; an Oscar statuette; an undeveloped roll of film. Except now, this “something” is a person. “I wanted to return Prim to you,” Aood clarifies, and the flashbacks that ensue grow increasingly misogynistic as the story plows on.

Introduced to a young Boss, whose family owns the hotel where Prim works as a bartender, the two connect and giddily scamper off to New York City together with dreams of opening their own bar. But once abroad, reality gets in the way. While Boss can rely on independent wealth to loaf around, Prim juggles two jobs and while training for a bartending competition. “Why can’t it be just the two of us?” Boss asks sulkily, to which Prim thankfully calls him out for making an unfair request.

However, his resentment grows to the point where he starts a dramatic fight at Prim’s workplace. At its apex, belligerent and intimidating as Prim quakes in place, Boss demands, “Quit all your fucking jobs. From now on, your job is only to make drinks for me. And only me.”

This is the protagonist we’re meant to sympathize with, mind you. As if this alarming scene wasn’t enough, Aood piles on. At first, as her platonic coworker, he seems to come to the rescue by giving Prim a place to crash while she sorts things out with Boss. But Aood soon reveals his ulterior motives through a planted kiss that visibly comes as a surprise, Prim’s expression confused. When she finds the words to speak, she turns him down with a firm “no” and cites residual feelings for Boss. That’s when Aood turns angry.

As any woman knows on a gut level, being around an angry and entitled man can be terrifying. So the tension of seeing Aood tower over her, the camera angle tilted up towards the ceiling in his basement apartment where the two of them are totally alone, made my skin crawl. Aood accuses her, “You moved in here and slept in my bed. What’s that all about?” and insists that she knew he has feelings for her.

His wounded litany goes on to accuse her of being a gold-digger who only likes Boss because he’s rich, culminating in the worst moment of an already fraught scene: Prim tries to leave the apartment, but Aood grabs her arm, preventing her from moving. He wants to make sure she takes the gift he’d bought her. “It was fucking expensive,” he says, but thankfully, she easily shrugs out of his grip and makes her escape.

Both fights with Prim are disturbing to watch. And when the film concludes without addressing any of it, the damage feels doubly inflicted. Sure, Aood apologizes to Boss for being a homewrecker—but who has apologized to Prim? No one. The script clearly does not grasp how horribly its protagonists had acted, so it makes no moves to acknowledge the very real emotional and verbal abuse they had exacted against Prim.

This major oversight destabilizes the remainder of the film. By the time One for the Road comes to a close on a dreamy Pattaya beach, with Boss approaching Prim at the cute mobile bar she now owns, the dissonance can’t be unheard.

Just as she’d done when they first met and fell in love, Prim serves Boss a drink. The achingly beautiful scene has all the hallmarks of an epic romance, and I wanted to lose myself in its soft focus radiance. But I just couldn’t root for Boss because a happy ending would validate his most selfish desires. After all, Prim has now “quit all [her] fucking jobs,” just as he’d demanded back in New York City. She could now devote to him her undivided attention. All Boss had ever wanted was someone to own, and now, he had her.

Race: 5/5

Given its Thai director, writers, cast, and settings, One for the Road completely centers the Thai experience. I might have dinged for colorism, as the main characters star exclusively light-skinned actors of mostly Han Chinese and European descent. That said, racial and socioeconomic nuance arrives through the globe-trotting nature of its characters, all of whom stop by New York City at some point in their lives before dispersing back to their present-day locations all over Thailand.

Likely informed by Poonpiriya and screenwriter Kai Boonprakob’s own experiences as students in New York City, at Pratt Institute and School of Visual Arts, respectively, it’s no wonder that their portraiture of expat life rings so true. They accurately depict the metropolis as a crossroads, where Thai couples, coworkers, friends, and roommates naturally coalesce into shared social circles. Subtle frictions caused by disparities in wealth come to the fore in interesting ways, such as the power dynamics of Boss allowing Aood to live in his penthouse apartment. This portrayal of modern migration, and of all the microaggressions that come with befriending fellow expats who may have hailed from very different backgrounds in one’s home country, feels utterly on point.

Deduction for Disability: -0.50

One for the Road begins so well for Aood, who kicks off the film in his car as he listens to moody music and scrolls through his phone’s contact list. Viewers assume that this will be his story, his journey—and for the first half of the movie, they wouldn’t be wrong. I happily settled in to watch a complex character, who happened to have a terminal illness, chase closure with varying degrees of success.

But once the chapters titles switch from the names of Aood’s ex-girlfriends to “B-sides,” One for the Road loses focus. In what feels like a bait-and-switch, Aood gets demoted from being the main character and turns into a tropey device who uses his last remaining days to better the life of someone nondisabled. Even Aood’s final moments are spent selflessly arranging for Boss’ happiness, revealed in slapdash ways like seeing Boss receive an inexplicable visit and apology from his mother, who had spent years displaying no such warmth, simply because Aood had asked her to. In addition, as mentioned above, Aood is responsible for pushing his friend towards Prim, who waits for Boss on a deserted beach like a perfect trophy girlfriend.

While of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with a disabled character wanting to take care of loved ones beyond the grave, what One for the Road likely doesn’t realize is that disabled characters have been consistently killed off in the service of nondisabled narratives for just about the entirety of cinema history. The final shot of the film even concludes with Boss having a vision of Aood driving away in the car he’d been too weak to steer while alive. By showcasing Aood “free” and happier as a ghost, it easily slips into the Better Dead Than Disabled trope.

It just feels like a shame because One for the Road’s early ruminations on Aood’s life were genuinely affecting. Seeing him let loose the ashes of his father’s urn out the window, his supportive friend next to him at the wheel, made my heart swell with emotion. Had Poonpiriya halted his film at the 66-minute mark, it would have made a perfect ending to a sublime story. But by swiveling the spotlight and devoting the remaining runtime to Boss’ story, Aood’s illness and eventual death feel like trivialized steps to the true goal of seeing Boss get his happy Disney ending.

Mediaversity Grade: C+ 3.25/5

Poonpiriya’s One for the Road is a feast for the senses, both visually and through heady music montages that had me ready to prematurely call this one of my favorite films of the year. However, later scenes of misogyny and ableism sneak up and squander its potential. In the end, no amount of arresting sunsets could stop me from feeling uneasy long after the credits rolled.

Like One for the Road? Try these other buddy dramedies.

Grade: CLiJanuary 29, 2021