A Little Thing Called Love

Nam is at secondary school, dark skinned, in glasses, and unnoticed by anyone. She falls for P'Shone, the older boy everyone likes, and spends three years remaking herself so that he will see her: grades, hair, skin, the drama club. Years of labour for a boy she cannot speak to. Puttipong Pormsaka Na-Sakonnakorn and Wasin Pokpong direct. Pimchanok Luevisadpaibul plays Nam and Mario Maurer plays Shone. It was made in Thailand but detonated somewhere else. After release in China it found an unexpectedly large audience and made Mario Maurer famous there overnight, raising the visibility of Thai cinema in the Chinese market. What works in it is the honesty. Nam's transformation is not offered as a fairy tale. The cost of changing yourself for someone else, and how much it actually achieves, is argued out openly. It runs over two hours and deliberately imitates how long adolescence feels. Who it is for: viewers who like Asian teen romance and first love at school age. Who it is not for: the film is extremely simple and extremely sincere. There is no room in it for irony or distance.