Haunted Houses, 2001
Betacam numérique PAL, 2'17'', couleur, son
In order to produce this project, whose scenario was written based on two episodes of the Thai television series Tong Prakaisad, Apichatpong Weerasethakul called on the contribution of non-professional actors – around sixty residents from six different villages in the Thai countryside – asking them to incarnate the characters from the series and act out the plot. Each of the families asked follows the linearity of a television episode. The characters are never played twice by the same person. The result is a film that resembles a cadavre exquis, which disorients the spectator. Furthermore, the discrepancy between the villagers' living conditions and the nature of the scenario – love, money and betrayal are the essence of the episodes of the series – the manner in which the amateur actors appropriate the dialogues and situations creates a subtle contrast. Haunted Houses involves a displacement between reality and fiction, and also makes its conditions of production apparent: awkward looks towards the camera from the actors, local villagers who have come to admire the scene, ambient sound, etc. The artist deals with various forms of audiovisual dependency, pointing out the impact that these melodramas have on the Thai population. Homes are indeed “haunted” by the television set, by the flow of hypnotic and alienating images of soap operas or telefilms that are far from reality. It is not so much a political critique of the lack of realism in these series that is established here, but rather a celebration of the genuine presence of people.
Louise Coquet
translated by Anna Knight
