A Bhutanese WeChat romance
Daniel Nelson
Lipstick and love songs prove more alluring than Buddhist bells and a quiet Himalayan village life for a young Bhutanese monk in a new documentary, Sing Me A Song.
Peyangki is eight years old when we first see him (”He’s a lama reincarnated”, whispers an older monk) and he’s happier to study religion than attend a conventional school. There’s a sign of things to come, however, when he admits: ‘I will be happy when electricity arrives, but also a little scared because it’s one of the main causes of fire – so I’ve been told.”
Electricity does arrive, and so – with even greater impact – do mobile phones, and in time he duly gets burnt.
Ten years later his head is permanently bowed over his phone. He’s not alone: there’s a devastating shot of two rows of boys chanting words from holy writings while many simultaneously scan their screens.
Soon he’s listening to love songs and sharing pictures (“She’s even more beautiful on this one”) with a young woman.
He is scolded for his educational shortcomings: “Instead of studying you are always playing on your phone. After a whole you learn almost nothing … If you have no more to give, return to your village.”
He knows it’s true, his mind is elsewhere: “Education is not for me.”
What’s for him are WeChat, the Internet halls of Thimphu, the capital, and red lips.
But the lips and city life turn out to be an illusion, and director Thomas Balmès’ captures one of the most striking scenes of dream-shattering disappointment I’ve ever seen.
The film offers other telling glimpses of life in Bhutan, including the matter-of-fact conversations between his would-be love, Ugyen, and her bar-girl colleagues, her cool phone appraisal of terrorist atrocities, and a group of red-robed monks waiting outside and then piling into an Internet gaming parlour.
But it’s not clear how much the director has intervened to streamline the story and sharpen conversations and reactions. Some incidents look forced, some scenes look too intimate or too staged to be filmed even by a fly on the wall. The general impression rings true, but is partly undermined by doubts about the specifics.
It’s also a film with the many unanswered questions, some of which may be clarified in a subsequent documentary, just as this follows on from Balmès’ 2013 film, Happiness, about Peyangki.
Nevertheless, it’s a riveting film that unwraps its story and characters quietly and revealingly.
* Sing Me A Song is distributed by Dogwood, buy £9.99, rent £4.99. Info: https://watch.dogwoof.com/film/sing-me-a-song