The Last Reel (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Kulikar Sotho
	Actors: Ma Rynet, Rous Mony, Sok Suthun
	Country: K
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 30.04.2015, Teatro Nuovo, FEFF2015
Synopsis: Hanging out with a band of small-time delinquants, the teenage girl Sophoun (Rynet) is looking for the sense to her life. She will befriend the director of a movie shot forty years before and from which the end is missing.
Review: I didn't get to see Thai movies at this edition of the Far East Film Festival (Thailand usually produces movies that I like), but I could see the first Cambodian movie in the festival history, which totally made up for it. It is a very down-to-Earth movie taking place in the present but including flashbacks during the worst period of the country History, when the Khmer Rouge overtook power. The movie uses the simple story of a missing reel as a starting point for telling much more about the live of the Cambodian people in the last 40 years. Like the old director says: "People of my age have lived two lives". During the end credits, we even get to see pictures of people working in the cinema industry that were a specific target for extermination by the Khmer Rouge, and to whom the movie is dedicated. The characters are quite ordinary people and don't display the stereotype characteristics that you find in many movies: good guy, bad guy, strong woman... You only get to see those a few time to help the story progress in a way we easily understand, but otherwise the story is quite unpredictable. I also liked that it is partly a movie about movie-making, and this sub-genre often leads to some interesting reflection on the process, for example in Matinee, Anguish or Unsung Hero shown at the same FEFF2015. When I think back, I realize that the twists in the last half hour seem a bit like in a soap opera (the girl talking to a guy that loved her mother and got her father killed while getting imprisoned himself...), but as the characters were well introduced and well played, it felt like a natural evolution of the story. The Last Reel turned out to be the best Drama I have seen at the FEFF2015, the female director was introducing the movie is a very eloquent and moving way, and won the award of best movie elected by the Black Dragon pass owners like me. A well-deserved price.
Rating: 8 /10 Kulikar Sotho receiving the Black Dragon award.