A Useful Ghost is the best sex-with-a-vacuum-cleaner film I’ve seen in a while – or perhaps ever. It is deeply funny. How could it not be? But it’s also, in its way, deadly serious. A first film from Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, its camp absurdism and high jinks with electric appliances are also a satire on Thailand’s violent recent history. You can see why it won the Critics’ Week prize at Cannes.
With most films you know what the film is, and where it’s going, within the first few minutes: ‘Oh, it’s this film.’ Here, you’ll have no idea. We start with a character simply called Ladyboy (Wisarut Homhuan). He lives in an area of Bangkok where the local shops and other buildings are being torn down and replaced by a shopping mall. His apartment is beset by dust so he buys a vacuum cleaner which, overnight, coughs up (with a human coughing sound) the dust it has gathered.
Even though there are no fancy special effects, the vacuum cleaner somehow has a personality
A repairman, Krong (Wanlop Rungkumjad), is summoned. He is gorgeous and arrives with remarkable speed. It’s not like the service you might get from, say, Currys. He offers a diagnosis: the vacuum cleaner is possessed. There’s an appliance factory, he continues, where a worker died and ever since ‘their appliances have been haunted by ghosts’. Krong’s tale frames the narrative that takes us to the factory run by Madam Suman (Apasiri Nitibhon). She is aware that her products are haunted but is not too upset. Indeed, as a dehumidifier goes walkabout she asks only: ‘Can we sell it?’
However, it quickly becomes more personal. Suman has a son, March (Wisarut Himmarat), whose pregnant wife, Nat, died from respiratory problems. ‘You can’t have construction without dust,’ explains a politician over the radio. ‘It’s a necessary evil.’ But now Nat is back – as a vacuum cleaner. In the warehouse she caresses March with her brush tool. March, who had been grieving deeply for his wife, is in ecstasy. Suman catches them at it and is not impressed. She whisks him to the doctor. ‘I am less worried about his fever,’ she tells the doctor, ‘than I am that he made out with the vacuum cleaner.’ (Every mother’s worst worry, wouldn’t you say?)
The cast have to deliver some very funny lines but it’s kept nicely deadpan throughout. And even though there are no fancy special effects, the vacuum cleaner somehow has a personality. When March is admitted to hospital I felt quite sorry for Nat, who has to spend the night in the waiting room, hose drawn up to her knees – or what I would suppose to be her knees.
Behind the absurdity lies a sharp commentary on the citizens erased by the state, the 2010 Red Shirt protests, the environmental crisis and other issues the Thai government would wish to sweep away. Nat, who later appears in human form (played by Davika Hoorne), proves to be the ‘useful ghost’, as she’s manipulated into colluding with the political elite. You don’t need to have a detailed knowledge of Thailand’s history to get it. You don’t even need to get it at all. It also works as an exploration of love, grief and romance. There is such terrific chemistry between Krong and Ladyboy you’ll be longing for them to get together but will they? Can they?
Its run time is just over two hours and it may be too sprawling but, on the whole, Boonbunchachoke is totally in command of the material and plays it, at all times, with absolute sincerity. It’s only, alas, available on Mubi and if you’ve already taken advantage of their seven-day free trial you might wish to stump up for a subscription. You could do a lot worse.
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