After shocking the entire Thai film circle with the dissolve of GTH (GMMTaiHub), the most successful film studio those days at the end of 2015, its successor GDH559 finally launched its initial work One Day by the most successful director Banjong Pisanthanakun (Shutter – 2004 and Pee Mak – 2013).
Denchai, a nerd working in a company’s computer department, has secretly been in love with Nui for a long time, perhaps because she is the one who remembers him. Like the world of his work, Denchai is somewhat unable to connect with his colleagues. He keeps himself in his own world. With that one-sided love, he risks everything to be with his dream girl Nui for just one day. He does not have the courage to express his feelings towards her. He finally gets his chance during the company trip to Hokkaido, after Nui encounters temporary memory loss in a skiing accident. He pretends to be her boyfriend.
Pisanthanakun comes back with romantic drama this time with deeper sensibility and multi-layered storyline than his earlier similar work Hello Stranger (2010). The former is merely a love story between two strangers in a foreign land. But One Day is the affection of memory and sacrifice, upon the non-formulaic details of genre. One Day smartly interplays between the lies, confrontation, memory and sacrifice. Denchai seems to be a man of dishonour when he takes advantage from Nui’s loss of memory to date her, just for his dream. But how is this different from Nui who lies herself that her boss would get divorce and marry her? What lies beneath all of this complex plot perhaps is the death of true love in the modern days. It will never exist, but only survive in lies and memory.
All of this beautiful subtext is wisely portrayed to the nice cinematography and excellent performance of the leads. The protagonist Denchai, portrayed by Chantavit Dhanasevi, does not go along with the ideal man in Thai society. In fact, he looks like a man of our daily lives – not a man of glamour. Sometimes, he looks weird, but at the same time, with a warm heart. Actor Dhanasevi can deliver it so well that he seems to live in with these conflicting chemistry. TV actress Nittha Jirayungyurn proves herself to have a bright future in the celluloid world.
Anchalee Chaiworaporn