Human Resource

In the middle of Human Resource, Fren (Prapamonton Eiamchan, in a singular performance) and her husband are deciding whether they are willing to pay a non-refundable, half-a-million baht deposit to reserve a spot at an international school for their unborn child. The husband is enthusiastic about it: he is already planning the precise ways in which their hustling for the future of their child will guarantee success, outlining that the rest of their lives will be dedicated solely to ensuring that this child will climb the social ladder higher than they managed to do. Fren is a lot more cautious – she was already hesitant to tell him about being pregnant in the first place, before an accident revealed it regardless, and she is now faced with having to make a decision about a future she can’t even imagine in her head. Instead, she is thinking about the pressure of raising someone to be “good” – all the choices, all the work, that goes into making a good person, in the unspoken context of a world that is increasingly more violent, chaotic, exerting pressure on everyone trying to survive in it. It captures the central themes of the film, how the hustle of survival – or in this case, the hustle of someone who is middle-class not to fall behind, to keep her place. When her husband talks about his negative experiences of going to a public school, when they visit Fren’s mother, who seems to lead a simple life as a shop-keeper and is suffering from constant pain in her leg, they are making clear what the stakes of not keeping up are. It’s the inherent struggle of the (in this case, newly minted) middle-class: memories of their parents lack of options haunt them, falling behind is a vivid possibility, but the option of climbing higher on the social ladder is dangled like a just-out-of-reach carrot to keep the wheels turning. This sense of precarity is translated into a constant sense of unease, of un-mooredness, along with the destabilising sense that society is collapsing around the characters, with news about violence, predictions about future catastrophes, filtering in through the news.

The dichotomy of “being a good person” and “surviving in a capitalistic hellscape” is at the centre of the film. Fren works as a recruiter in HR, feeding desperate people who cannot turn down a job even when it comes with a requirement to work six days a week and face an intolerable boss who frequently throws things at his underlings when he is frustrated (or resorts to quiet, psychological terror, openly exerting his power especially when he is in the wrong) into the machine, knowing what toll it will take on them because she is living with the burden of it every day. There is an empty workstation in the office reminding her every day what it means, morally, to recruit: the woman who used to sit there has disappeared, her mother hasn’t heard from her for days, and the film eventually reveals that she has committed suicide after quietly bearing the burden for too long. The spectre of the consequences haunt Fren throughout the film, as does the deadline of finding someone to replace the employee so that things can continue as usual. If she weren’t pregnant, if her husband didn’t have such grand plans for their child, perhaps she could quit, but through how she and her colleague speak about the potential hires, it becomes clear that the job market is tight enough that it would be difficult to find a new job – and she doesn’t have rich parents to fall back on, or a financial cushion to make this clearly necessary decision. What does it mean for a society when it becomes impossible to make a moral decision, to be a good person? 

Fren’s inability to act and how trapped she is in her situation is contrasted with how her husband adapts to the circumstances of their life. He is a product rep for bulletproof vests, and chasing an expensive contract with the police force that is putting him in contact with very powerful men. Fren seems morally cautious about his involvement, as he is quite literally profiting from an increase in violence, from the uncertainty that is haunting her, to the extent where he is hounding down the most blood-thirsty, captivating news story to make his sales pitch stronger. At the same time, he is in a constant battle against the motorcycle riders who disregard the one-way-street leading to their apartment building: he might not have real, actual power anywhere else in his life, but he tries to regain it by enforcing the road rules they disregard to his inconvenience, in a process that first puts Fren in physical danger, and then, at the end of the film, leads him to an actual act of violence that he commits because he knows that he now has the kind of highly-placed friends in the police force that will mean he is protected against consequences. This is the kind of corruption, the lack of consequences for the well-connected to the detriment of everyone else, that is the cause for both her woes at work and the chaos in society in general, but the film hasn’t really left her with any way out – she is trapped by circumstance. 

Phanakngan Mai (Prod Rap Wai Phicharana), 2025, directed by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, starring Prapamonton Eiamchan, Paopetch Charoensook, Pimmada Chaisakaoen, Chanakan Rattana-Udom.