Human Resource
Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s Human Resource flows with the rhythms of everyday life, the slow accumulation of gestures and moments that fold personal anxieties about work and family into the wider tremors of a society in decline. At its centre is Fren (Prapamonton Eiamchan), a human resources officer tasked with filling a particularly challenging post: six-day work weeks, dismal pay and an unrepentantly abusive manager who is prone to throwing things at employees’ faces. Candidates come and go, each daring to ask for the bare minimum – a two-day weekend, the possibility of remote work, a slightly higher salary – and each is swiftly dismissed. Fren sits in her glass-walled office, the empty chair of the previous employee facing the smog-filled skyline. What might at first glance appear to be a prime seat with a floor-to-ceiling view becomes a metaphor for the futility of aspiration.
Threaded through this professional drudgery is the omnipresent drone of the 24-hour news cycle. The television or radio is almost always on in the background, churning out reports of crime, corruption, natural disaster and ecological collapse. Human Resource favours restrained performances and cool, muted tones – one poignant scene shows Fren’s husband (Paopetch Jarernsuk) biting into an apple while a broadcast solemnly informs viewers that apples contain the highest concentration of microplastics of any fruit. Thamrongrattanarit leaves it ambiguous: is the world truly in freefall, or is it the endless saturation of bad news that makes life feel unbearable? Either way, it weighs heavily on Fren, particularly when she considers whether to bring a child into such a world.
Her husband, meanwhile, offers a subtler complication. They are not wealthy, but belong to a comfortable managerial stratum that survives by cultivating insider connections – the kind that tip you off that tap water is contaminated before the news becomes public. He is genial, even tender: a devoted partner, a kindly son-in-law, and the type of man who would make a decent father. Yet his eagerness to remain within the “in group” only sharpens Fren’s unease about the compromises required to preserve stability in such precarious times.
Thamrongrattanarit distills the small routines of work and home into a portrait of a generation suspended between private hopes and collective dread. Ultimately, Human Resource is less about individual characters than about the condition of living when the future feels increasingly untenable – a sombre meditation on life in the face of decline.
Christina Yang
Human Resource does not have a release date yet.
Read more reviews from our Venice Film Festival coverage here.
For further information about the event, visit the Venice Film Festival website here.
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