“Lahn Mah,” a small comic drama about a young man trying to wheedle his way into his dying grandmother’s good graces for a possible inheritance and accidentally growing up along the way, is a huge hit in its home country. It became the second-highest-grossing Thai film last year and the 12th-highest ever. The tearjerker has also made the shortlist for the international feature Oscar — under its English title: “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies.”
If that sounds less like a sensitive family story set against a background of national economic distress than a broader comedy, such as 1990’s “Daddy’s Dyin’: Who’s Got the Will?” or 1994’s “Greedy,” its director says he’s heard that from some Western viewers who’ve told him it’s not what they expected.
“Almost like 90% of people say that,” Pat Boonnitipat acknowledges, laughing. (“Lahn Mah” translates more directly as “Grandma’s Grandson,” suggesting a film about the bond between the two relatives.) “The first draft from our script writer was a wacky comedy. Then we rewrote it for 20 drafts, and it kept changing. But we weren’t so good in English, so we had no idea how to rename it [more appropriately], so we just left it there.”
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“How to Make Millions” is veteran TV director Boonnitipat’s first theatrical feature. It stars Putthipong Assaratanakul, better known as TV star and singer Billkin, as the layabout grandson and Usha Seamkhum as the terminally ill grandmother, both making their feature debuts as well.
Boonnitipat says Billkin, a major celebrity in Thailand, stumbled in his first audition. But then the young star worked with an acting teacher the director respects: “After two months, he came back to do the casting again, and he was really, really, really good.”
Seamkhum had very little acting experience. The director first saw her in a music video in which she didn’t perform; she just sat with a guitar and smoked cigarettes.
“We got very, very lucky” with her casting, he says. Although Amah (a Thai diminutive for “Grandma”) is uninhibited in the film, she isn’t played broadly, as she might be in an American comedy. She knows who she is and isn’t shy anymore, like in a sponge-bath scene played for laughs. Her frankness can be touching, including when she says it’s better when her troubled son doesn’t come by, because it means he doesn’t need anything. Boonnitipat says much of his own amah shows up in the character.
“She is the only grandmother I know, so I brought everything about her into the film,” he says. “What I really love about her is the way she doesn’t show her emotions, so you can’t predict her jokes. You have no idea whether she’s serious or trying to make you laugh.”
With two novice leads, Boonnitipat says extensive prep time was invaluable.
“Before we started shooting, we did lots of workshops. A lot of them wouldn’t be about acting but spending time together. And they became very close. They developed this bond that [feels] like they‘re [a] real grandparent and grandson. They became very natural on camera. And off-camera, they’re the same. I think that’s what’s really magical about them.”
The film’s underlying economic circumstances — society-wide financial straits driving people to extreme measures — will ring a bell to fans of, say, recent South Korean cinema and television (“Squid Game” or the Oscar winner “Parasite”).
“We watch a lot of movies from Hollywood and Korea and Japan, and it’s so beautiful. I mean, the way they encourage you to pursue your goal and things like that,” says the 34-year-old Boonnitipat. “But it’s very common in Thailand that, when you graduate from university, you suddenly find it’s impossible not only to make it but to make a living.
The director’s dream about her father as a child inspired her to collect memories and shape them into a film.
“Our parents bought land, built a house; spent their whole life savings to build it. But in my generation, we cannot buy a piece of land. To pay for just building a house is almost impossible. The best we could reach for is to somehow pay for our apartment. So that became the genesis of the protagonist. In my generation, you only hope you’re so lucky that your parents or grandparents have something left for you so that you can climb on, because it otherwise is impossible.”
Those conditions make the grandson’s actions less far-fetched; perhaps even uncomfortably believable. Boonnitipat merges that desperation with the filial duty ingrained in Thai society.
“You know you have to take care of your grandma. But now, if you want to put your grandparents [in] elder care, you have to reserve, I believe, 30 years in advance — in order to get into good-quality, but not so expensive, elder care. So you start booking right now for your grandparents and then for yourself. That’s how you roll.”
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