Sundance Film Festival movie review: 'One for the Road'
Two former friends ruminate on life and love during a fateful road trip across Thailand in the drama 'One for the Road' (premiering at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival).
In short: New York club owner Boss (Tor Thanapob) receives a phone call from estranged friend Aood (Ice Natara), who reveals he is in the last stages of terminal cancer. Boss rushes home to Thailand to help Aood tie up loose ends in his final days.
Usually, this type of drama is reserved for old men wistfully looking back on a long life and staring down the barrel of mortality. That convention assumes that nostalgia requires wrinkles and a head full of grey hair. So it is refreshing to find a story that realizes even young men can soberly reflect on years of impulsive and selfish choices - and facing mortality doesn't require decades upon decades upon decades of "life experience."
This Thai story feels like a story broken into chapters, and the film itself is almost split down the middle between the two friends. The first half finds Boss helping an ailing Aood make amends to past girlfriends, ostensibly to return mementos to them - but more so to give Aood a chance to say goodbye. Each meeting with one of Aood's ex-girlfiends feels like a self-contained episode within a larger story. Each segment represents another facet of a broken relationship, recognizing that some relationships pick up right where you left off, while other disconnections are just too painful to revisit. Just when the movie finds its groove in following Boss and Aood reconnecting with ex-girlfriends - 'One' takes an unexpected pivot ... and turns its attention on the most important relationship of the film: the two former friends.
'One' doesn't just shift focus - there's a fundamental tonal change as well. The front half is steeped in nostalgia and regret, peppered with fleeting moments of Aood's romanticized recollections ... and Aood's sober awareness of his part in the breakups. While the first half is light on plot, it is rich in all-too-relatable flashes of melancholic memories. 'One' hits a nerve when Aood recalls a memory that he could probably live in forever - but a memory of days long since gone. This allows the film to be much more evocative and easier to connect with emotionally, even the elicited emotions aren't all joyful jaunts down memory lane.
Aside from being the effortlessly charming best friend, Boss doesn't get much to do in the film's first half. But the story drops tantalizing little clues about his relationship with Aood and the fact that they were once close, but have since drifted apart. After following the pair across Thailand, 'One' shifts its focus to Boss and renders Aood as the supporting character. Unlike the emotionally-rooted first half, the second half is essentially a plot-heavy origin story explaining exactly how the once close friends ended up living on opposite sides of the Earth. While Boss's backstory fills in a lot of narrative gaps and it is a singular story of guilt and heartbreak, the story itself feels like a separate movie entirely. Several new characters - who were never referenced or alluded to - show up to explain how Boss came to own a Manhattan bar. 'One for the Road' could have benefited greatly from a story that was more cohesively woven together, because the final cut feels like two different stories oddly stitched together to form one movie.
Final verdict: 'One for the Road' distills romantic memories in this mediation on closure and what could have been. While the film starts out strong, the second half is less fulfilling and feels much more perfunctory in its diligent mission to fill in the story of Aood and Boss.
Score: 3.5/5
'One for the Road' screens at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. This drama is not yet rated and has a running time of 136 minutes.
Directed by Baz Poonpiriya / Screenplay by Baz Poonpiriya, Nottapon Boonprakob & Puangsoi Aksornsawang / Music by Vichaya Vatanasapt / Cinematography by Phaklao Jiraungkoonkun / Film Editing by Chonlasit Upanigkit / Production Design by Patchara Lertkai / Starring Tor Thanapob, Ice Natara, Violette Wautier, Aokbab Chutimon, Ploi Horwang & Noon Siraphun.
