Onlookers Review – Glimpses of a South-East Asian Country Molded by Tourism.

Shot in Laos, Kimi Takesue’s unique documentary observes scenes and landscapes that would not be out of place on tourist brochures. Subtle in its cinematic motion, the film examines shimmering temples of gold, waterfalls cascading down silver rocks, and lines of Buddhist monks moving through verdant scenery. It also shows what is missing in glossy brochures, namely the incursion of tourists.

The disruption to the everyday pace of locals is at once visual and aural: we see crowds of wandering visitors, their casual clothes of tee-shirts and shorts a sharp juxtaposition to the historic structures. Their sometimes boisterous leisure activities are intercut with more ordinary instances from the daily routines of residents, like schoolchildren heading to class or women presenting offerings to monks by the roadside.

An Underlying Friction Amidst the Static Camera and Motion

There’s a sense of tension between the unmoving shot and the movements that occur within the frame. Shots of tourists being loaded on to buses recall Jacques Tati’s 1967 classic Playtime, which subtly critiques the idea of an authentic cultural experience attained via consumerist means. The point of view in Takesue’s film, however, is on less firm footing.

Some of the cinematic contrasts veer towards reiterating well-worn binaries between the east and west, the regional and the global. For instance, the majority of the tourists seen in Onlookers are white; in truth, visitors to Laos largely come from neighbouring Asian countries. Likewise, the Laotian population is also not at all uniform: one sequence shows men of a certain age playing a game of catch, with a caption telling us they are “arguing in Lao” – yet some of them are using Vietnamese language.

The film does raise some interesting questions about the dynamic between tourism and film, even if it has few novel or deep revelations into both subjects.

Onlookers is streaming via True Story from 5 December.