Yes or No_ Sarasawadee Wongsompetch;
Song: One Day If You Have the Courage_ Composed and Performed by Budoka.
Briefly, this piece of music is
added to the context in which the lesbian couple has to be apart. Pie comes
from an upper class Thai family who follows tradition and customs. Therefore,
she really disapproves of homosexual love. Then, she shares her room with a
look-like-boy girl, Kim. Kim is very caring, kind and sweet. At first, Pie is
pretty reluctant to interact with Kim but gradually, they form a nice
friendship. After a period of time, Pie realizes that she unconsciously falls
in love with Kim, a kind of innocent love. However, they always have to hide
their love because Pie feels ashamed and is scared to let people know about it,
especially her mother. In this scene, Pie decides not to let her mother down
and break up with Kim. But the main reason is that she is not brave enough to
face either truth or prejudice. Both of them feel broken-hearted and helpless.
The lyrics of the song are
extremely related to the film’s story. The song goes, “It’s like our love has
to be underneath dark shadow. I’d like to see you brave enough for our love . .
. and there’s a path that’s waiting for us not far from here . . . For one day,
I just want you to look up for the stars, and don’t be shy with the sky . . .
don’t avoid anybody’s eyes . . . For one day, I want you to dare to look at
people’s eyes and tell them that we’re in love. . . “It is easily seen that Pie
and Kim have such a beautiful relationship that I find the film lovely and easy
to watch. The kind of love this film depicts is not “dark” or hard or too
stressful. Everything is just so nice and natural. Because of this, the audience
can feel the connection between these two characters. Similarly, they can also
understand the conflict inside them and the misery they suffer. In this scene,
the music plays such an important part in reflecting their deep sorrow, internal
conflict and confusion. That relationship gives Pie a complex which is
described in the song. Pie finds it hard to be brave and go for her real love. She
also finds it awkward and shameful to go against the tradition. All these feelings
are not expressed in dialogues, but in the song.
It is plausible to say that every
image going along with the song is related to it. For example, the image of
their bursting into tears, which expresses their breakdown. The image of Pie’s
going back to the room that they share and sitting on Kim’s bed. This image
implies how much she misses Kim. The image of a sad face on the sandwich; Pie
recalls their memories and so on. Of them all, the image that impressed me the
most is that image of Pie’s opening a paper butterfly and finding Kim’s
writing, “One day that you’d be brave enough, we’ll fly together.” This message
matches the song the most. It can be said that the song helps spread the film’s
message, which is that it takes their braveness to fall in love.
This song triggers one of my
memories. I started a love story two months before I moved to the U.S. I
remember how we also had to hide our love. We were like part-time lovers.
Standing in front of people, we pretended to be friends. Now we are thousands
of miles apart. Sometimes I feel like it is a dream just to come back to my
country. I feel helpless. But I tried much harder than I can ever imagine I
myself could. Now that I have saved enough money and I am flying back to Viet
Nam and staying there for a month after this semester is over. Listening to the
song in that specific context reminded me of how I have tried for my love. It
is a very lovely film.
In
my opinion, this piece of music is used in the rightest scene of the film. It
is effective in evoking the audience’s emotions. This is the point at which
they need to decide to move on with their love or give up. If you watch this
film from the beginning, to this point, you can understand how they are brought
together by destiny and their own characteristics. Thus, you may not want to
believe that they decide to break up. And then, the music is added to the right
moment. It is like a flashback of their memories and their current depressing condition.
Watch this film from the beginning and this piece will bring a lot of you to
tears for sure. And of course, for those who fight hard for their love, they
will find themselves very much related to the song in particular and the whole
film in general.
