The director as a priest, the camera a confessional box, and the idols worthy of worship become teary girls choked by emotion.
The most anticipated film of the week features 26 girls, many of them crying on screen, all of them speaking to the camera about the things they love and hate, about what they feel and fear.
"Being a nobody is scary," one of them says. Girls Don't Cry, a Thai documentary film that enjoys a wide opening this week, attempts to do something unexpected: to give a human face to the popular phenomenon that hinges on manufacturing cute young girls in frilly skirts into "idols" -- cheery, all-smiling song-and-dance talents who command cult-like adoration from legions of fans.
"From their public image, I thought I would be talking to young girls," said director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit who spent over 60 hours interviewing all 26 members of BNK48, the biggest girl group of the past 12 months.
"But no, in fact they're very mature. They're self-critical, they're able to look at what happened to them over the past year. I'm surprised, because this isn't what most people would think of them."
What do most people think of BNK48? That's a question that defines our age, one that demarcates generational gaps, acceptance of millennial pop-culture, and even the fine line between admiration for, obsession with, and possibly exploitation of showbiz dreams.
Since its debut in early 2017, BNK48 -- a "sister band" of the original Japanese idol group AKB48 -- has officially introduced "idol culture" to a Thai audience. A music group as well as a business model, BNK48 (like AKB48 and other sister bands across Asia, from China to Jakarta and Mumbai) is built upon a culture of adoration, by which ota, or fans, line up to buy CDs, mob the glass "fishbowl" where their idols appear, follow their online live chats, and buy tickets to "handshake events" regularly held at malls.
BNK48 has released just three singles -- and landed one huge hit with the Thai version of the Japanese lollipop tune Fortune Cookie -- but their singing ability isn't the prime magnet: rather it's the personality of each band member, their social media activities, and their interaction with fans that create a specific ecosystem of celebrity worship -- and also a lucrative franchise.
Girls Don't Cry tries to look at it differently. Director Nawapol -- known for his darkly comic films such as Marry Is Happy Mary Is Happy and Heart Attack -- has chosen to focus not on the cheerful side of the band and its members, but on the coming-of-age anxiety inevitably felt by these girls who've signed up to a showbiz machine that measures their success through number of likes and followers, through mass approval aided by social media. Much of the film captures each girl member's face as she speaks directly to the camera, interspersed with concert and audition footage, and the result is contrary to what we would expect from this kind of "behind-the-scenes" documentary.
"There are 26 girls in the band. It's like a classroom in an all-female school," said the filmmaker. "So, in a way, they are friends who practically sleep in the same room but who also have to compete with each other. There's pressure, and that can be tough for them."
The youngest girl in BNK48 is 14, the oldest 23, the rest are from 16 to 21. What the film reveals is the intensity of tacit rivalry and the brutal mechanism that demands the girls to invent themselves for the benefit of their fan club. Some of the band members are more popular than others, appear in more concerts, have more followers on Instagram and Facebook, already received product-endorsement offers and naturally have a brighter future. From the testimonies of the band members, the system of selection -- which means some members will be featured in a song and others cut out -- can be motivating, inspiring, and also cruel. Girls Don't Cry can be seen as a milder version of The Hunger Games.
When Nawapol released the trailer of Girls Don't Cry a month ago, it featured many of the band members tearing up on camera. For a band known for its candy-coloured costumes and feel-good vibes, the dark undertone of Girls Don't Cry is unexpected -- and different from previous documentaries about AKB48-style idol groups, which are usually fan-service materials that highlight the activities of the bands.
"Tears can be clichéd," laughs Nawapol. "There are many documentaries that have people sit in front of the camera and they cry. But I try to say that tears can mean different things. It's not just despair or sadness; it can be tears of frustration, of the intensity of the relationships between the members.
"I spent many months with them, talking to them, observing them, and at the end I decided to interview every single member -- all 26 of them, spending a few hours with each one. To my surprise, they talked about things I didn't expect to hear. Even a prominent member, such as Cherprang Areekul, who's given many interviews before -- she also talked frankly about many subjects I didn't know before. Not just because they trust me, but because, I think, they knew that this is a chance for them to speak up and be completely open. It's also because the past year when their popularity has risen, when they're in the spotlight all the time, they've suddenly grown up -- they've become adults so quickly because of what they had to go through."
A film about idol culture that has generated much discussion over the past two years is called Tokyo Idols, a Japanese documentary that centres on the obsession of hardcore fans over Japanese girl groups. Nawapol's Girls Don't Cry, which is commissioned by the studio that manages BNK48, turns that around by not including fan culture in the story at all. The director admits that he was surprised that the studio allowed him to take the film in this direction -- to present the less cheerful side of the girls and, in effect, to be somewhat critical of the system to which they belong.
The idol system is commonly criticised for the rules that members have to follow strictly; for instance, dating is forbidden. Also, the appearance of a large group of girls in short skirts, or in a fishbowl in a mall, may have raised some eyebrows.
"Some of these rules may feel unfair, and what these girls have to go through may feel hard," said Nawapol. "Still, I don't think what they have to put up with is worse that what we in general have to -- in our daily life there are rules we don't agree with and yet we comply with them. After spending time with them, I realise, however, that what makes their condition more intense is the fact that they are just girls, many of them are 16 or 17, and everything can feel much harder for them."
Idols are those who are looked up to by others. Girls Don't Cry, said Nawapol, is about these idols looking into themselves. "That's the hardest part of it all -- for them."
Girls Don't Cry opens nationwide today.