BAD GENIUS, the highest-grossing Thai film of the year in its motherland and grossed a gob-smacked $38.4 million in the Chinese market, is an almost singular case of global sensation for any movie hailed from Southern Asia.
To mold BAD GENIUS (only his second feature) as a Hollywood-style caper thriller, Thai director Nattawut Poonpiriya has to grapple with the daunting challenge to make the tedious campus exam into a white-knuckle, stylish escapade which requires more than a smidgeon of ingenuity in its writer’s room, even though its slam-dunk ‘2B COME WON’ project is too airy-fairy to operate a posteriori.
The central character is a straight-A secondary school student Lynn (fashion model Chuengcharoensukying making her screen debut), is an all-around genius who is befriended by Grace (Hosuwan), popular, pretty, but wearing a dunce cap. Out of friendship, Lynn helps Grace to cheat in a math exam, and thereupon, once her talent in exam-cheating is proven, and as per the supply-and-demand rule, her speculative undertaking snowballs with more clients and monetary return, Lynn is from the wrong side of the track, whereas Grace’s boyfriend Pat (Supapunpinyo) is born with a silver spoon, therefore Lynn needs a partner-in-crime who is commensurate in her intellectual level, here comes her nerdy classmate Bank (Santinatornkul), also the school’s scholarship recipient from a modest family background.
A priori, audience can immediately discern the kindred spirit between Lynn and Bank, with a possible if trite romantic subplot in the offing, however, the screenplay doesn’t fall for the easy tropes, in lieu it crisscrosses their respective personality modulations, Lynn, who appears none-too-hesitant in consenting to the scam in exchange of material gain at the first place, has to wrestle with her swelling guilty conscience when their scheme goes somehow amiss in Sydney, and finally opts for a clean conscience above all things, whereas Bank, who starts as a righteous wonk, and inadvertently sabotages Lynn’s chance of studying abroad, must undergo a diametrical path on the moral compass when the film reaches its ending, not entirely unsympathetic, but Bank’s descending into the dark side also obviates a lovey-dovey cop-out and is instrumental to the film’s reflection of a society corrupted with materialism, classism and a porous education system, where unspoken rules reside and marks is the only criterion to decide a student’s future.
To build the film’s escalating tension and distantiate it from a pedestrian campus setting, Poonpiriya avails himself of hyperbolic slo-mo flourishes, sleek, snappy montage sequences and a taunt score to great advantage, even a simulation of a tracking shot is applied with an illusory conceit during the critical moment when Lynn tries to memorize the answers like music notes in order to pull off the whole ploy. Also riding on the strength of a more-than-capable young cast, BAD GENIUS thrusts a refreshing spin onto a familiar playground of adolescent frivolity with panache, verve and brainwaves to not incur simultaneous quibbles about its lol preposterousness.
referential entries: Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010, 6.4/10); Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s HEADSHOT (2011, 6.7/10).
