Nitchapoom Chaianun | Our First Time / 2023

free ticket

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nitchapoom Chaianun (screenwriter and director) Our First Time / 2023 [33 minutes]

 

Sud Yod (Klong Chindanai) is a famed young game streamer who has a million subscribers. We watch a scene as he interacts verbally with the game on the screen, evidently revealing his moves to his viewers as he goes through the maneuvers of the game.

 

    But on this particular afternoon, his neck and back are hurting, the results of such a sedentary life, sitting at his machine throughout most of the day. He remembers that one of his sponsors in the renowned The Gentle Massage and Spa on Nimman Road in Chiang Mai, Thailand, that they have awarded him a free message coupon.

      With some slight trepidation the young gamer enters the large massage parlor, encountering the receptionist Num Un (Yodsakon Khamnang) who recognizes him and greets him with great deference. Sud Yod explains his purpose, but as Num Un reports, it’s a holiday so they are very few massage specialists at work on this day, and those that are working are busy with customers. He excuses himself to discuss the matter with is uncle, who owns the business.

      The uncle has just gotten off the phone after trying to call in a free-lancer who is unable to come in as a substitute due to family business. But the uncle also recognizes the young man’s name, and is troubled that he cannot provide him with the proper service.

       But then he recalls that his nephew had once himself insisted that he wanted to become a masseur, and realizes he has no choice but to allow him his first customer.

       Meeting with Sud Yod, the owner explains that he is increasing the value of the pass by providing the young gamer with a 2-hour oil massage after which he can take a half-hour bath. Nam Un, he explains, will be his masseur.

        After a drink of tea for his customer, Num Un takes his new customer into the room to wash his feet, explaining that it is his very first time as a masseur, hoping that Sud Yod will simply trust him. After some thought, Sud Yod, seeing the cute boy’s acute worry, agrees, and the fun begins.

      Actually, Num Un is a wonderful masseur, soothing out all of Sud Yod’s pain, but also, as he hovers over him on the bed, almost kissing his neck as he swoops down to put his knuckles to Sud Yod’s upper back. The absolute relaxed joy on the young gamer’s face makes it clear that between the soothing relations of the flesh and the semi-sexual services that Num Un proffers, he is almost in heaven. He falls to sleep, only to awakened by his masseur who sadly announces his time is up.

    After finally fully bringing himself back to reality, Sud Yod bathes in a beautiful pool of water, retreating to the lobby again where he sits for a while and talks, tentatively, with his masseur. Both boys are so timid that they can’t really say what’s foremost on their mind, that in some way they have fallen in love or, at least, as the publicity paragraph for this movie explains it, “they have had a good first impression” of each other. Nam Um does ask Sud Yod if he thinks he might become a full-time masseur, which, after some pretense of pauses, the boy assures him that he does. And Nam Un explains the poverty of his family which permitted him only an education through 9th grade. His dream now is to become the best masseur in the parlor and to make enough money to buy his parents a new house, since they now rent.

      If his dreams are clearly petty and bourgeois, they are nonetheless sincere, and possibly even may be brought into reality if Sud Yod were to support the idea. The gamer finally assures him that he thinks he will make a great masseur and, yes, he will return for another session.

         The words between these two boys are few and slow to come, but we see by the silly grins on their faces how much they have both come to mean to each other. And when Sud Yod finally leaves, Nam Un breaks into a kind of lovely uncontainable round of giggles and joyful jumps that everything has turned out so well, that he may now find a way to live out his dreams, and, perhaps more importantly, make a deeper friendship with the famous Sud Yod. He’s so beautiful in his youthful joy that it almost brings one to tears.

        Thai director “Nicchi” Chaianun has created a work of no great profundity that is closer to being one of the hundreds of boylove movies made these days in Asia. Neither boy has anything very serious on his mind, and perhaps has nothing very intelligent to truly express to the another. But their pleasure in one another’s company is so palpable that it’s nearly contagious. And it would take a sour and judgmental viewer to find no joy in this otherwise empty picture.

 

Los Angeles, March 23, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).