From a breezy look back at a groundbreaking classic to funhouse-mirror portraits of our politically fractured moment — our picks for the film festival’s highlights
By DAVID FEAR
‘A Useful Ghost’
Because who doesn’t love a Thai movie about possessed household appliances and horny ghosts fucking everybody in sight? The winner of the big prize at this year’s Semaine de la Critique, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s unclassifiable, truly wackadoo mix of comedy and supernatural shenanigans starts with a factory accident that traps the spirit of a dead worker into a vacuum cleaner. It ends with a moving meditation on memory, grief, and the lengths one will go to keep a deceased loved one from going gently into the night. In between all of this is a number of hilarious vignettes involving randy machinery, some sideways class commentary, a haunting (in more ways than one) performance from Thai actor Davika Hoorne, and a shit-ton of paranormal sex. No notes.
