‘A Useful Ghost’ Review: Vacuum Cleaner Love Story Doesn’t Suck [C+] Cannes

You won’t find a better elevator pitch at Cannes this year than the premise for the Thai Critics’ Week title A Useful Ghost, a supernatural fable about a young woman (Nat, played by Davika Hoorne) who returns to haunt her husband’s vacuum cleaner after her passing. And in a festival which prides itself on cinematic surprises, you likely won’t be shocked to discover that the debut effort from director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke runs out of steam at its midway point, transitioning into a straightforward horror spoof after a delightfully oddball opening act. Prior to then, A Useful Ghost has the same uncanny relationship between fables and the mundane present day as the films of fellow countryman Apichatpong Weerasethakul, another director who often uses mythical tales rooted in his country’s rich folklore as a jumping off point for wider explorations of sexuality and queerness.

Admittedly, by our western tastes, Boonbunchachoke’s story can feel regressive in certain places; the central storyline is recounted as an anecdote by a repairman to a drag queen, who repeatedly refers to themselves via an outdated term (you are correct in assuming which one) the movie utilizes as a punchline multiple times. It’s particularly strange considering that the human-vacuum relationship isn’t just treated with sincerity, but as a thinly veiled allegory for the barriers queer people face in society, with March’s (Witsarut Himmarat) relationship with his new hoover wife paralleled with his gay brother, who is also treated like an outcast in high society for marrying a man. Admittedly, there’s no way of writing that sentence without it sounding like the most right-wing satire of queer sexuality and gender, but this is by design, and the movie is at its best when deliberately sending up that viewpoint. If the central relationship weren’t as empathetically drawn as it is, I suspect it would open itself up to far more criticism on that front.

Which isn’t to say A Useful Ghost plays their relationship entirely straight. Although we see Nat in her human form throughout, when it comes to the pair consummating their relationship once again, we view it as the other characters would – it’s like if the pie in American Pie had a soul. The film is strongest when the other characters have a blase response to a vacuum cleaner wheeling itself around the city, starting conversations with bemused passers by. Here, the movie never feels like it’s belaboring its social commentary, or boxing itself in by deliberately invoking right wing talking points, coasting on sheer oddball charm as it depicts an against-the-odds relationship at face value, and not a muddled representation of something more significant. The straight-faced nature once again suggests a more mainstream friendly variation of Weerasethakul’s supernatural storytelling, where characters can be nonplussed by anything from comatose soldiers with powerful erections, to horny catfish. However, the more it attempts to present itself as in on the joke, the more confused the overarching allegory becomes. It’s hard to fully go along for the ride when Boonbunchachoke is never consistent with how seriously he wants us to take his story.

As the distracting narrative framework – the story being recounted to a drag queen – blossoms increasingly into a meet-cute, the tale being told gradually morphs into one of straightforward revenge. It’s disappointing that a movie which began as a more offbeat comedy pivots entirely towards riffing on genre tropes familiar to audiences in both the East and the West, almost completely departing from the very specific comic tone and social commentary that had made it feel like such a charming – if occasionally as regressive as the viewpoints it’s sending up – curio just moments earlier. In other words, this is inescapably the work of a first-time filmmaker desperate to make an impression, but failing to thread the needle between their myriad ideas. The quirkiness of the romance when taken at face value was enough to charm, but the writer/director seems increasingly distracted from these simple joys, and bloats his movie with enough half-baked ideas to push the runtime in excess of the two hour mark. I can’t fault the scale of the ambition, but when the film gradually introduces aspects which fluctuate from the sincerity of the core relationship and this story being perceived as a sincere allegory on a deeper level, it can’t help but feel like a disappointment.

As previously evidenced in his Lorcano-selected 2020 short Red Aninsri, Boonbunchachoke is a cine-literate, unshakably satirical filmmaker, but the punchiness of that work has gotten lost in the needlessly expansive storyline. I hope his distinct identity doesn’t get quite so lost in his future work.

Grade: C+

This review is from the Cannes Film Festival where A Useful Ghost premiered in Critics Week.