It’s Thai cinema that’s first to the screen credit “Based on the Twitter feed of …” Four hundred and 10 tweets by real-life teenager @marylony form the basis of this impatient, searching film by sophomore director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit and produced by Aditya Assarat (Wonderful Town). Said micro-missives are flashed over and between story segments, as high-school pupil Mary (Poopiriya) struggles to produce her yearbook. The constant wash of meta-commentary and a tone cantilevered just off realism adds a Godardian feel – he is name-checked – and there is a Jules et Jim-ish love triangle. But if this is a nouvelle vague for web 2.0, it proves surprisingly earnest. Mary’s self-conscious (and slightly irritating) escapades – buying a jellyfish online, an exploding iPhone – are subsumed into a more pained plotstream that mostly justifies an unTwitterishly elongated runtime. Beneath the modern veneer, something timeless emerges: a (pretty good) coming-of-age story. The tweets grow epigrammatic wings.
