This documentary tells a classic story of gentrification: an inner-city housing estate demolished to make way for a luxury development; ordinary people being priced out of the city. The city here is Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where in 2017 a modernist housing block known affectionately as the White Building was pulled down. Director Kavich Neang’s family was among the nearly 500 to be evicted, and this film predates Neang’s fictionalised account of the same events.
In interviews, Neang has spoken about his embarrassment as a kid telling people that he lived in the White Building. It was home to artists, musicians and civil servants, but in later years became run down: it acquired a reputation for prostitution and drug-taking, and was downgraded to a slum.
It helps to know some of this beforehand. Because while Neang’s film is a touching and meditative cine-essay about community and home, he is not bothered too much with context or detail. You pick up bits here and there. At a residents’ meeting, one man explains with exquisite politeness to a government bureaucrat that his flat is so tiny – just 14 sq metres (about 150 sq ft) – that compensation won’t help him. “What can I do?” He is met with silence.
Mostly Kavich observes families dismantling their homes and lives, breaking down beds, unscrewing every last fixture and fitting, worrying about money. He interviews his own father, a sculptor, as he dusts and boxes up books. How does he feel? “Don’t ask me that. It breaks my heart.”
We watch the communal hallways – arteries of life in the building – empty of scampering kids and pot plants. It’s a film that requires a bit of focused concentration. The reward is poetic images that stick in the mind like memories: in one flat, the camera lingers on a mirror. Someone has tied a yellow comb to it, presumably for everyone to use, so it won’t be lost. And it is loss this documentary captures so tenderly, with some beautiful photography.
• Last Night I Saw You Smiling is available on 9 September on True Story.
