Fifteen-year-old Bua has striking looks and lives in the countryside with her grandmother (Sawanee Utoomma), who runs a charcoal factory. Hoping to go to Bangkok and find her mother, she secretly takes beauty pageant lessons behind her grandmother’s back. Amid her grandmother’s declining health and a world growing more unsettled, the more beautiful Bua becomes, and the more the men around her try to exploit her innocence and desperation. Women directors Inthira Charoenpura and Phensiri Klangsurin make their feature debut with Bua, the name of its protagonist and the Thai word for lotus. Bua unfolds against a backdrop of widespread racial discrimination and fierce student movements in 1970s Thailand, yet the deja vu it stirs transcends time and place, leaving a bitter aftertaste. In the end, the spire of sorrow built by the greed of a hypocritical older generation will surely be toppled by the next generation – a generation rooted in decaying organic matter yet blooming clean and beautiful, like the lotus. (PARK Sungho)