The grist mill of capitalism has no shortage of critics today, incisive policymakers and inane pedants alike who know too well the anonymous and alienated husks that socioeconomic precarity turns us all into, but who, aside from recourse to the tried-and-tested dispatches of cynicism, have little new to say. Perhaps this is by design in a system that pits individuals against unerring market forces and, by extension, favors manic sentiment over measured reason; perhaps Mark Fisher was right when he wrote in Capitalist Realism of the “massive desacralization of culture,” in which neoliberal imagination falters under the guise of first-world consumer freedom. Regardless, this freedom comes undone most acutely in the corporate backrooms of HR, where the bullshitters themselves steer clear of their own product as they survey index after index of aspiring workers. The freedom to choose your job and enter into capitalist relations, being caveated by an alternative of certain starvation, is never quite freedom in the truest sense.
Human resources is thus a department uncannily attuned to the travails of modern working life, and consequently its focus in Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s ninth feature warrants closer look. Within the nested environs of corporate Bangkok, recruiter Fren (Prapamonton Eiamchan) contemplates the reality of her middle-class dream as she anticipates the birth of her child. Drifting through training seminars replete with corporate-speak and filled with a simmering urgency to find the replacement for a colleague who up and went, she winds up as a silent protagonist, her face pensive and ready, at a moment’s notice, to implode. Much of Human Resource, in fact, abounds with an implosive impulse: from a bully superior (Varinton Yaroojjanont) whose remit extends even to HR, to an uneasy first trimester spent with her well-meaning but distant husband Thame (Paopetch Charoensook), Fren’s despondent outlook gradually approximates that of her fellow recruiter Tenn (Chanakan Rattana-Udom), whose all-too-jovial mask lets slip on occasion in their professional interviews.
One such interview leads to Jida (Pimmada Chaisaksoen), a quiet young woman with an indomitable spirit battered into her, getting the job. Almost right after, a minor car accident forces Fren to reveal her pregnancy to Thame and thereby forecloses any furtive possibility of abortion. The couple ease into the logistics of starting a nuclear family (polite dinner celebrations with Thame’s business clients, waitlists — years in advance! — for elite private schools, visits to mom, etc.), every frame of Thamrongrattanarit’s aseptic film a well of repressed gloom. While its depressive atmosphere no doubt remains integral to Human Resource, one can’t help but feel boxed in stylistically by a work eager to play it safe and complete the checklist of themes and tones. A road rage episode illustrates a certain helplessness of the working middle; a film filled to the brim with familiar pastiches bristles with certain boredom. As it skitters into a series of inoffensive longueurs, nonetheless, its title bears unpacking. Human resource as singular could imply a finitude of resources, a precarious little thing, or it could exalt the unavailing resourcefulness intrinsic to humanity. “We didn’t force her into it,” Fren comforts Tenn as they prepare to hire Jida. That’s a resourcefulness of language alright, but exploited in one too many consolation.
Published as part of Venice Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 3.
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