Blissfully Yours (2002) Mysterious Object at Noon (2000)

"If thereís a new direction in store for cinema in the 21st century, 'Joe' is leading the way."—Time Out

See Joe's first two features tonight: Blissfully Yours, a sensual idyll, and Mysterious Object at Noon, a hybrid of documentary and fiction.

Second feature start time: 9:20 pm. The director's second feature, the disarmingly sensual Blissfully Yours is set in a small town near the Burmese border, where a young woman plans a romantic day with her illegal immigrant boyfriend. The two are joined by another woman when they take a pleasure trip into the jungle. As the Chicago Reader's Fred Camper notes, "the idyll practically unfolds in real time, and the way the characters periodically disconnect from each other, even while making love, creates an unusual atmosphere of rapture and alienation." (125 mins.)

Inimitably mixing fact with fiction, Mysterious Object at Noon confronts everyday people in Bangkok and points south willing to reveal themselves for the director's camera—street vendors, grannies, video-game-obsessed school kids—and to contribute to the film's overarching story about a paraplegic boy and his unpredictable tutor. Through this "exquisite corpse" technique of assembling different footage and by the direct involvement in the representation of different ethnic and social groups, the film recycles rural and urban folklores to produce a pleasurable, startling hybrid. (85 mins.)

Still in his early 30s, Joe was born in a small city in northeast Thailand and studied film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Two of his three feature-length films have won top prizes at Cannes Film Festivals (including one for Blissfully Yours), an accomplishment all the more remarkable in light of their highly experimental nature.


Thanks to Marcus Hu, Strand Releasing, and Sakeson Sarobol, Royal Thai Consulate, Los Angeles, for assistance with this series.


support credits

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's artist residency presented with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wexner Center Residency Award program.

Season support provided by the Rohauer Collection Foundation and the Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation.

Contemporary films, international films, and visiting filmmakers presented with support from the Ohio Arts Council.