Canopy Crossings

Its name is Maeklong market, but as is explained it's also known as the "railway market", the "collapsing umbrella market", but best of all "danger market". That's near enough the only real excitement. This is an odd film. Sequences that might be documentary preface it, explaining the importance of colour to Thailand. The King's colour is yellow, due to the year of his birth, but when he emerged from hospital wearing pink that became the colour to be seen in. All that established, then, there's also some fiction - Pennapa is looking after her mother's market stall, Arthid wants also to go to Bangkok, to become an actor.

Eight times a day the train comes through the market. It shuffles across the ground like a Miyazaki caterpillar, the wheel noise like steel drums. It skims the ground, floating over the merchandise, the titular canopies pulled back and forth like waving banners in a crowd.

This is a slight film, but that's not problematic because of its greatest feature; it is suffused with colour, saturated, possessed of a tremendous sense of place - not just Maeklong, but Thailand. It's helped by good sound work: the oppressive approach of a train, the bustle of the market, the clamour of a crowd. Raktin Uthai's work is good, helped by Eakchai Mekpan's music.

Gary Yong's direction is good, though his scripting is somewhat prosaic. Phagawadee Pongchay as Pennapa and Tanakrit Udomseththaworn as Arthid are good, but a gentle story gives them little to do. The ending is relatively brave in terms of its lack of resolution, which contributes to the quasi-documentary feel. Given how visual the film is, the sight of a camera truck caught in a scooter's mirror is distracting, but it's one minor slip in an otherwise well-judged spectacle. Though perhaps that sells it too loudly - consider it a postcard of sorts - a bright picture, a brief sentiment, a pleasant moment, and away.