Long Live Love Review: The Thai film stars Sunny Suwanmethanont as Sati, Araya A Hargate as Meta, Rebecca Patricia Becky Armstrong as Namo, Niti Chaichitatorn as Santi, and others. Directed by Piyakarn Butprasert, the director co-wrote the story with Pongsuang Choop. The runtime is 2 hours and 15 minutes. On Netflix, the film has English subtitles.
Long Live Love Trailer
In Long Live Love, Sati and Meta decide to divorce, and Meta breaks the news to her 15-year-old daughter, Namo. However, Sati meets with an accident that causes memory loss. When he returns home, Meta tells him she’s his sister. One night, Sati discovers time travel through photographs. If he recreates a picture from the past, he travels to that particular moment and witnesses everything that’s happening. Every time Sati goes back in time, he discovers troubling truths about himself.
Long Live Love Review Contains Mild Spoilers
Long Live Love Review: Discussion
Long Live Love movie starts with Meta telling her daughter Namo that she’s divorcing her father. Namo cheers upon hearing the news, and as a viewer, one has no clue why she’s celebrating her parents’ separation. When Sati meets with an accident, loses his memory, and is brought back home, we feel bad for him. However, as the story progresses, not just Sati but we also see what a terrible husband and father he has been. We understand Namo and Meta’s joy of separation from him.
The concept of travelling back in time by recreating the photographs is poetic yet tragic. Often, we look at our old pictures and wish to go back in time to relive the good old days. Sati gets to do that; however, his new version is like blank paper. He is neither bad nor good. So he’s taken aback to see his past self being awful. Two things can happen with this time travel element: Sati either becomes the same unpleasant person or changes for the better.
Thankfully, Sati repulses his old self, who was a liar, cheater and irresponsible man who mistreated his wife and didn’t pay attention to his daughter Namo. Seeing him as a completely new person surprises Meta, Namo, and Santi (his brother), who often try to test him. After all, their mental health and well-being is at stake. As a concept, Long Live Love sounds like a heavy family drama. But the humour and silliness help to cut the growing tension in several scenes. But when the makers want to hit you hard, they do it rightfully.
Whenever Sati travels back in time, he becomes the audience’s lens, so even we are hit with the shock of seeing how stubborn and horrible he was in the past. We hardly know about Sati to begin with. So whatever information we gather about him happens only when there’s a photographic time-travel scene. Setting the narrative this way benefits the film, as it makes us eager to know what went horribly wrong between Meta and Sati when they decided to end their marriage.
The last 40 minutes are where Netflix’s Long Live Love gets dramatic and emotionally dense. Even though we know the present Sati is nowhere close to his past self, it’s still him. The makers leave us in a predicament of whether Meta should forgive him.
The only thing that bothered me about the movie was its runtime, which is more than 2 hours. Several scenes featuring Namo and her friend and Sati and his friends, who try to manipulate him into being his old self, were overstretched. If they were edited out a bit, the film wouldn’t have made you yearn for the conclusion after 100 minutes.
Sunny Suwanmethanont is playing one character, but in different versions. Whether it’s the clueless Sati in the beginning, the one who’s coming face-to-face with his past, or the one who’s outright indecent, Sunny does a phenomenal job. The actor shares a wonderful chemistry with Araya A Hargate, aka Meta. Araya depicts the confusion and irritation of her character quite well while making us empathise with her plight. Actors Rebecca Patricia Armstrong and Niti Chaichitatorn also play their parts well.
Long Live Love Review: Final Thoughts
Overall, the Thai film Long Live Love is a photographic time travel and family drama with the intention of redemption. But will the character face his demons and change himself or not? It is something to look out for. The movie shows how horrible one looks when they treat others poorly. But imagine if one is made to look at their questionable actions. We’ve seen time travel concepts usually in sci-fi or superhero stories. It’s refreshing to see that it can be used to convey sentiments that result in growth and change.
Long Live Love 2023 is now streaming on Netflix.
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