Nothing Personal Same Same but Different

The Beholder

Mon 22 Feb / Cineworld 9 / 6.30pm

Director: Detlev Buck

2009 / Germany / 105 minutes

Principal Cast: David Kross, Apinya Sakuljaroensuk, Anatole Taubman, Mario Adorf

David Kross (The Reader) plays Ben, a young man in search of adventure who flies off to Cambodia with his best friend. During the first days, the pair check out tourist sites and cheap drugs, but then Ben meets Sreykeo (Sakuljaroensuk), a young Cambodian woman who confounds the expected commercial exchange between a rich, callow Western man and a poor Cambodian woman. In a series of beautifully shot encounters set to spare chamber music and melancholy Euro-pop, Ben and Sreykeo fall in love.

Director Detlev Buck appears to be channelling Lost in Translation and In the Mood for Love, as this, too, is a story of illicit love drenched in minor chords and urban decay. The difference is that Sreykeo is HIV-positive. Inspired by a true story, Same Same but Different feels both thoroughly contemporary and desperately romantic.