Mysterious Object At Noon

Apichatpong Weerasethakul - 2000
A story told on the Breton-esque principle of the 'exquisite corpse', what struck me here was almost a sense of dread running behind it. That is, of zombies, death hanging over, a mundane kind of spirit world. The ramshackle nature of the storytelling principle is mirrored in the camera, where we appear to have black and white and a strong filter of some kind.
The camera work, sometimes fixed to a car ('Driving Lessons'- Staub-Huilet), also works with loger shots, and unsteady closer work. This, combined with the snatched dialgoue and story, certainly give a lack of coherence, of even unified space.
The storytelling motif seems, almost, to come from behind the camera with a threatening gun in hand. There isn't space to luxuriate in the tight world of the story, yet the story makes no sense. The 'Arabian Nights' style aesthetic is undercit by this kind of doubling, this not-free by necessary command for a story.
Yet this film is also fascinating in its evocation of 'just hanging out'. Ultimately, that is mostly what is going on, but within this idea of vague threat. When that threat is dissipated, the voice behind the camera says the shot's over, we do have a kind of freedom, though nothing too pure seems to come through.
The idea of relaxation, relaxing and losing tension in a film, not constrained by everything but just watching people, having a look, is on this film's horizon (especially after the end credits) and constantly evoked. It is a fascinating discourse, with many of the pleasures, of this kind of idea.