Present Perfect (2017) – getting lost to find what still hurts
In the quiet snow of Japan, two Thai men meet and find themselves reflected in each other’s solitude. A story about loss, love, and the unexpected tenderness of starting over.
If you’ve ever tried to outwalk a heartbreak, you’ll understand Toey from the very first minute. He lands in snowy Higashikawa not as a tourist, but as someone who needs silence more than scenery. The town gives him both – long white roads, slow mornings, and a kind of quiet where thoughts get louder. And then there’s Oat, a fellow Thai stranger next door, who looks like a brief encounter and ends up as a mirror.
Two strangers, one winter – and the awkward magic of kindness
The film doesn’t push them together with grand gestures. It lets tiny accidents do the work – a locked door, a supermarket run, the kind of half-embarrassing natto lesson you remember years later. Toey is sore, sarcastic, a little prickly. Oat is careful, patient, and more tender than he is ready to admit. Their rhythm grows from simple logistics into ritual: walk, talk, warm food, shared quiet. No speeches. No declarations. Just the kind of companionship that slides in under your guard and starts rearranging the furniture.
Heartbreak travels with you – even when you change countries
Present Perfect understands that a plane ticket does not reset a heart. We don’t watch Toey “get over it” in three scenes. We watch how grief behaves when you are away from home: it shows up in sudden weather, in badly timed phone calls, in questions you ask a new friend at 2 a.m. Oat responds with kindness that never turns into a lecture. He opens a door, boils tea, listens. Sometimes that is all that stops a person from drowning in their own head.
Onsen courage – the vulnerability of being seen in Present Perfect 2017 gay film
There is an onsen moment that says everything about this film’s grammar. The nudity isn’t erotic – it is honest. The water turns the room into a truth chamber where performance dissolves. Both men stand there literally with nothing to hide behind, and the film invites us to read the smallest signals: eyes that linger a second longer, a breath that stays at the top of the chest, jokes used like mittens when the feelings are too hot to touch. It is intimacy without the neon sign – and that is why it lands.
Truth, dare, and the rules we invent for ourselves
The tipsy game night is messy, funny, and quietly revealing. It nudges both men over the thin line between curiosity and confession. The film handles it with care – desire appears, but never bulldozes the characters into something they are not ready for. Present Perfect is not a fantasy where one kiss solves your life. It is the record of two people choosing tenderness inside their limits. In a genre that loves fireworks, this story is a candle and a blanket.
Marriage, duty, and the math of grown up choices
One of the film’s strongest threads is the conversation about marriage – not as a postcard, but as an arrangement of love, duty, family, and timing. The script refuses to punish anyone for choosing differently. That refusal makes the film kinder and, frankly, braver. We do not need a villain to feel the ache. Life is complicated enough. Sometimes the right person arrives at the wrong time, and sometimes what heals you is not possession, but proof that you were seen and cared for when you needed it most.
Japan as a second character – snow, steam, and the sound of healing
Higashikawa is not background. It is a soft collaborator. Snow edits the world into fewer colors. Footsteps become sentences. The grocery aisle at closing time is a stage for domestic intimacy. Even the infamous natto turns into a lesson: how something you thought you hated can taste different in good company. The cinematography keeps finding little altars – window fog, late light on a table, a scarf passed between hands – and trusts us to understand.
Present Perfect 2017 – Performances that feel lived in
Sukrit Wisetkaew builds Toey with a lovely contradiction – spiky on the outside, bruised on the inside. He flinches at kindness like it might hurt, which tells you everything about where he has been. Kritsana Maroukasonti’s Oat is the film’s emotional thermostat – he never steals focus, he regulates temperature. Watch his listening. Watch how he waits before answering, like he is holding space for the other person to breathe. Together, they play not romance-as-fireworks, but romance-as-oxygen.
What the film is really about
Present Perfect 2017 gay film pretends to be a travel movie and a rebound story. What it truly is: a study of attention. Attention as medicine. Attention as consent. Attention as the most basic kind of love that says – I am here, I am not in a hurry, and you are safe in this minute. It is amazing how much can change when a person is allowed to be exactly as broken as they are, without being asked to perform the quick version of recovery.
Does it end with a tidy bow
No. And thank you for that. The film respects the real world where feelings do not always find a calendar slot that suits everyone. What we get instead is something I love more – a before and an after. Toey before Higashikawa, and Toey after it. The distance between those two versions is the happy ending. The rest is life. Planes leave. Messages get shorter. People keep the scarf you gave them and wear it on cold days. That counts.
Should you watch it
Yes – if you like romance that whispers instead of shouts, if you are allergic to false drama, if you believe that the sexiest thing two adults can do is make soup for each other and tell the truth. Watch it for the winter quiet. Watch Present Perfect 2017 gay film for the way a simple dinner looks like home when the right person sits across from you. And if you have ever healed in slow motion, you will feel seen.
One last note
Bring patience and a warm drink. Present Perfect moves at the speed of trust. It is not trying to seduce you – it is inviting you to sit down and breathe. If you accept the invitation, you might stand up a little lighter than when you came in.
