“Has enough impact to stand tall as a portrait of modern Thailand.”

Bringing a child into this world has become an act of bravery. Looming climate change, increasing social polarization, growing inequality, pollution of our environment; the list goes on and on. “You like to watch the news,” says someone to the protagonist of Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s ninth feature film Human Resource. She does, and that only increases her doubt about bringing a child into the world. An understandable position, and a rich source for not just the study of a character, but of contemporary global life, in particular that of the upwardly mobile. The director achieves this through the portrait of a woman who seemingly has it all, but learns that money, higher education, and social standing mean little in the face of a more fundamental human question in an ever-worsening world: do I want to expose my child to this?

In her strenuous HR job, Fren (Prapamonton Eiamchan) and her co-worker are faced with a continuous stream of employee drop-outs as a result of the workplace harassment by her bullying manager. To fill the position of an employee who hasn’t shown up at work for days and doesn’t respond to Fren’s messages, they interview a group of young and highly educated people who are eager to throw themselves into the corporate grind. They come with demands of their own, raising Fren’s stress levels because her KPI says she has to find someone new within 30 days. She is stressed out anyway, because she has just found out that she is pregnant. If she brings her child into the world, will its future lie in this bleak landscape of concrete and glass, where hours are long and a work-life balance doesn’t exist? Besides, just look at the news: growing inequality, rampant violence, school massacres. She keeps her pregnancy a secret from her husband Thame (Chanakan Rattana-Udom), himself a cog in a corporate wheel, and someone who is preoccupied with money, career, and status. Time is running out, since abortion is only legal in Thailand in the first 12 weeks after conception. But when an unfortunate car accident as a result of her absent-mindedness and fatigue leads to a hospital checkup, Fren is forced to come clean. And just like that the decision is taken away from her.

Human Resource tackles a lot of heavy subjects, and contrary to most Thai films that reach Western shores and achieve success, these are not at all or only slightly specific to Thailand. Capitalist exploitation, female bodily autonomy, patriarchal structures, and workplace abuse are global topics; the film simply shows them through a slight Thai filter, but with none of the ‘exoticism’ that attracts some Western audiences to the work of the director’s compatriots. He presents them with subtlety, relying both on Eiamchan’s face and on reading between the lines. The limit on permissible abortion for instance is not conveyed through direct exposition, but as a piece of relevant information in a news report about a pregnant woman arrested for murder. News reports and people talking about ‘things they heard’ are an important source of information about the larger issues that go through Fren’s mind as she tries to reach her decision, but the film also uses Bangkok to paint a picture of an environment not well-suited for raising a child. Rigid lines drawn by office buildings and apartment towers fill the screen with glass and concrete with barely a patch of green in sight. Office interiors are drab and impersonal, dark mausoleums that do not invite people to come and work there, but judging by the job interviews, money and benefits are too alluring and outweigh these negatives.

Once the cat is out of the bag and an enthusiastic and suddenly more helpful Thame starts planning the future of his unborn child, notably barely consulting Fren, the film lays bare the class differences one of the earlier news reports already hinted at. Even if the baby hasn’t been born yet, the couple already have to put in an application for a prestigious international school with a long waiting list. The school has everything a child could want and need, a stark contrast to the public schooling Thame and Fren had, as he jokingly remarks to the school principal showing them around. The film tries to paint this contrast elsewhere too, in a recurring conflict between Thame and a scooter driver. Thame doesn’t hide his disdain for this ‘lower class citizen’ who gets on his nerves, because he feels he has the right of way. The resolution of this tug of war is somewhat over the top, a rather clumsy way to show that even though he is in the wrong, as a member of a higher class Thame will always win such a war. Likewise, the fate of the co-worker who has gone missing runs like a thread through the film, but since we never actually see her, the impact of that fate never truly hits home, even as it underlines the limits to which corporate employees in Thailand (but realistically, everywhere) are pushed.

Even then, Human Resource has enough impact to stand tall as a portrait of modern Thailand, a side of the country we don’t often get to see in cinema. Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit guides the film with a firm hand and clear vision, letting the drama efficiently play out in subdued tones and relying on his two central actors to convey the emotions while barely showing them. A telling scene in an office elevator, in which a new co-worker who started with youthful energy is beginning to show a broken spirit, uses just two quick shots and a look of understanding to convey a lot in little time. A beautiful film with a warning, Human Resource shows that the grind is universal, and so is the decision to have a child or not.