แฟลตเกิร์ล ชั้นห่างระหว่าง เ ร า 「Chan Hang Rawang Rao」
Release Date: February 06th, 2025
Duration: 129 mins.
Director: Jirassaya Wongsutin
Writer: Jirassaya Wongsutin (Screenplay)
Starring: Kirana Pipityakorn (Jane), Fatima Dechawaleekul (Ann), Pakorn Chatborrirak (Tong), Wachirakon Raksasuwan, Namfon Pakdee,
Police flats are government subsidised housing for police officers and their families, each of whom occupies a couple of small rooms. This is the setting for a coming-of-age movie from Thai director Jirassaya Wongsutin who, according to an interview, set the film in the very same police flats she grew up in.
The film chronicles the shifting relationship dynamics of high school girls Jane (Kirana Pipityakorn), the pampered only child of a senior sergeant, and the slightly older Ann (Fatima Dechawaleekul), the eldest daughter of a fractured family. Friends since they were practically babies, they have grown up together in same block of flats and they share a bond akin to loyal sisters, a factor that sees Jane remain committed to supporting Ann and her family after the death of the father in the line of duty two years prior to the start of the film.
Around 18 years old (they talk about turning 30 in 12 years time) and due to finish high school, Ann is looking to leave and become an air hostess while the slightly younger Jane struggles to think of life outside of the police flats, where her parents hold influence, and away from Ann, the girl she adores. Adolescence hasn’t finished for them quite yet as it is now while together that they begin to parse out their sexuality and the overwhelming financial problems that Ann’s family face in the absence of the father.
The sexuality part comes with the easy intimacy the girls share in sleepovers developing into something more as they begin gazing at each other and games of touching eyelashes is fraught with a tension physical tension as they wonder aloud about the bond they share. It then becomes complicated with the entry of a handsome 34-year-old policeman named Tong (Pakorn Chatborrirak) who alternately holds the position of supportive older brother who helps the girls out from time to time and a third person in a possible love triangle.
The issue of age gaps could be troublesome material but Tong, although fleshed out enough, is quietly shuffled away once the story has finished using him for the character’s rising-conflict. The screenplay prioritises the relationship between the girls and foregrounds the issues of differences in wealth, although his presence does form another interesting factor in illustrating how the girls see the world as he could be a financial lifeline.
The film features a really vivid depiction of Ann and her family’s precarious situation with regards to money and lodging. She has to make money while managing a hopeless mother, rambunctious younger siblings, and the constant threat of her family being kicked out of their police flat. Money is the constant drip-drip of despair that eats away at the girl’s relationship, the richer and naïve Jane shown as being allowed to be more romantic while Ann, ever in need of financial and material support, is portrayed as that bit more cynical, worldly, and resentful. Thus, the class differences between the girls lead somewhat organically to confrontations that have a bit more bite to them. The two principal actors also credibly portray girls desperate to love each other but held back by differing social situations.
This difference in class and mindsets is also gracefully conveyed the film’s central location of the tower block, with a courtyard in the middle and a badminton court at its centre that the girls often play in, the different floors their apartments are on dictates their status in society – think Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019) with the house on the hill. For Jane, the big blocky walls and happy family memories radiate safety and security that she wants her best friend to be a part of forever, while for Ann, undergoing an adolescent urge to escape, it becomes a prison and a hothouse for rumours and shame.
The pressure on Ann to be a family breadwinner and the shame she feels over her mother is the true dramatic undercurrent of this film. At one of its most poignant moments, Ann says, “I’m more afraid of not being able to leave,” and we see that the closest she can get to being an air hostess (and escaping) is watching the planes that cut across the square patch of sky they can see from the badminton court. The film layers some bitter ironic parallels for the best friends to undergo as Jane comes around to the idea that letting go of Ann might be for the best, but the beauty of the bond between the two and the mutual support they show, no matter how bitter their conflict, makes for some moving drama. Jirassaya Wongsutin delivers a really assured feature debut.
Flat Girls was screened on March 18 at Theatre Umeda Cinema 4. It was screened again on March 20 at ABC Hall.