Jan Dara

Director: Nonzee Nimibutr
Year: 2001
Starring: Santisuk Promsiri, Christy Chung, Eakarat Sarasukh
Time: 122 minutes

Nonzee Nimibutr followed up his Nang-Nak success with this fairly scandalous film that is based on Utsana Pleungtham's 'The Story of Jan Dara', published in 1966. It felt more like it was based on some trashy Southern gothic novel of heaving breasts, tyrannical fathers, rape and incestual relationships. There is barely a moment of joy in this film – it is all wretchedly sordid, ugly and hopeless. I disliked it intensely and felt in the need to shed my skin afterwards. Not that it is a badly made film – beautifully filmed, a wonderful period recreation, solid acting, good narrative flow, erotic scenes – but I simply found the depiction of this extremely dysfunctional family to be odious and without a ray of humor or humanity to be found.

Jan Dara is born and his mother dies – his father (Khun Luang) takes an immediate hatred to the boy and names him Jan (a curse word in Thai). His Aunt Waad brings him up in his father’s household and gives him the only slice of love in his childhood – even letting him suck on her breasts at one point. The father brings in numerous servant girls to have sex with while starring at the photo of his dead wife and Jan occasionally witnesses these trysts. Khun Luang is also sleeping with Aunt Waad and a baby sister (Kaew) is born, but she is brought up by the father to despise him and is basically a horrid unrepentant human being. At one point Jan falls for a young girl, Hyacinith, and this appears as perhaps his one hope from his dismal life, but that flickers out like a mirage.
The father brings another wife to live with them – the luscious Christy Chung. The film received a huge amount of publicity when it was announced that this well-known Hong Kong actress was appearing bare breasted for the first time in the film. Not only does she appear bare breasted on a number of occasions as well as having some torrid sex scenes, but Christy also learned Thai for her part. Though her role is actually minor compared to the publicity she received – she is actually perhaps the best thing in it. The characters continue their descent into moral degeneration and by the end everyone seems to have slept with everyone else – but little pleasure is derived from it – and in the end few lessons are learned. In the prologue the film says it is not suitable for children or those with strong religious beliefs – I would add anyone who has no desire to sit through two hours of repulsive behavior from characters that have no spark of life within them.

The DVD and VCD have English subs.

My rating for this film: 4.0 (though you can add a few points if all you really want to see are Christy’s breasts)

Krai Thong

Director: Sutat Intaranupakorn
Year: 2001
Starring: Winai Kraibutr, Champagne X, Chutima Every, Wannasa Thomgwiset
Time: 91 minutes

One would like to say with a wink and a nod that the abysmal filmmaking and truly bizarre plot of this film is simply paying homage to the sci-fi/fantasy/monster films of the 1950’s (the original of this film made then as well), but somehow I don’t think that is the case. This is just an amazingly weird and poorly made film that at some point actually becomes fairly entertaining for just those qualities. I mean how can some of the stuff that goes on here not bring a smile to one’s jaded face. This is sort of Creature from the Black Lagoon meets Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice with some very strange sexual couplings taking place. I suppose one should just accept a lot of this on face value since the film is based on a legend written up by King Rama II (1768 – 1824) – no different than Jason and the Argonauts – but to the best of my recollection Jason never had intimate relations with the fleece.

A giant crocodile is terrorizing the people in the province of Phichit (about 350 km. from Bangkok) by coming on land and killing all before it. As soon as someone starts talking about the crocodile, you can mark them up for croc grub. None of this is particularly scary though as it plays out more like a Mac Sennett comedy than anything – one fellow doesn’t notice that his hand has been eaten off till its pointed out by his bug-eyed friend – and the crocodile itself is a poor excuse for special effects. Krai Thong is a legendary crocodile hunter and he comes to slay the beast – especially after hearing the reward – one of the daughters of the village chief. As we soon learn, this is one very horny crocodile hunter and one look at the two daughters – who appear to be Thai Airline hostess who got lost – and he is ready to put his life on the line.
This is all fairly ordinary so far – but then it begins getting oh so very strange. It is revealed that the crocodile can take human form and has an appetite for human flesh – not just the eating of – but also the bedding of. So when the village adorns all of its virgins in sexy white revealing outfits for a ritual you know this will stimulate the crocodile and he shows up for the party without an invitation and grabs one of the daughters and takes her below. It turns out he has a croc cave – spacious, very nicely decorated, a lovely aquarium – it would easily get $2000 a month on the rental market in New York. Here the croc likes to relax – show his human side – read Playboy – smoke his pipe – and play doctor with his catch of the day. He also has two crocodettes that can also turn human and are total croc hotties.

Krai Thong shows up to rescue his honey – but first stops to have a shag with one of the croc hotties – I am not sure I can entirely blame him. All this is kind of fun but executed very poorly – every fight scene is shakey hand held camera and speeded up – the acting is wooden – the comic relief is painful – the crowd scenes are idiotic - the reaction shots are laughable - and the dialogue is ridiculous – but its not every day that you find yourself thinking “I wonder where I could meet a cute croc like that”. Today the cave has become a tourist stop and it has statues of Krai Thong and Chalawan (the crocodile) in front of the entrance. Last seen the crocodettes were working in a Bangkok go-go bar.

The film is on DVD with English subs from Winson.

My rating for this film: 5.0

Tears of the Black Tiger (Fa Talai Jone)

Director: Wisit Sasanatieng
Year: 2000
Starring: Stella Malucchi (Rompoey), Chartchai Ngamsan (Dum), Sombati Medhanee (Fai), Supakorn Kitsuwon (Mahesuan), Arawat Ruangvuth (Police Captain Kumjorn), Santisuk Promsiri (young Dum)
Time: 104 minutes

Director Wisit Sasanatieng could never live in a black and white world, but he clearly revels in the films made from that period. In this film he chews up a number of those influences from B Westerns to silent movies to old Thai melodramas and spits them out on a canvass of exploding colors and visual wit. It’s a delirious free fall into a Wizard of Oz technicolor dream of film images and styles from the past all exaggerated as if fed on streams of psychedelic drugs. Every scene appears to be a homage to some film genre/style/shot that ate its way into the director’s consciousness as he was growing up, but out of this he manages to create a bizarre and beautiful hybrid film that is stunningly original and undefinable. His integration of startling colors, sounds and music make this almost a tone poem on one level, but his sense of the absurd shakes it loose of any potential artistic pretensions and provides a unique eye popping giddy viewing experience.

The plot is as clichéd as an orphan’s smudged face, but this is no doubt exactly what the director was attempting. Though the narrative plays out in apparent sincerity – and actually is fairly touching at times – Sasanatieng spins visual magic around it and his tongue in cheek playful style is very humorous and always giving the viewer a wink. In a very early scene the director announces his comical intentions when the hero Dum is in a shootout and his enemy is hiding behind a pillar. Dum gages the situation and ricochets a shot into the man. Suddenly a card pops up on the screen in silent film fashion and asks “Do you want to see that again?” and answers its own question by showing in slow motion the bullet ricocheting off a number of things before reaching its intended target. Everything is exaggerated from the villainous laughs to the twirling moustaches to the gobs of blood, but it all has an intended effect of both being homage and being affectionately comical at the same time. Much of the film is pure deranged anachronism – a Western – set in Thailand – in the 1950s. It may not make much sense, but who cares?
Dum grows up as the son of a poor farmer and becomes friends with Rumpoey the daughter of a wealthy landowner. This clearly does not set well with her parents and she is sent off to Bangkok to get her away from Dum. A number of years later in Bangkok Dum saves her from a group of leering male students and the two fall in love. They plan to elope but first Dum returns home where he finds a local hooligan has killed his parents. He picks up his father’s rifle and goes for revenge, but is rescued from his own death by a friend of his father, Fai, the head of the bandit group called The Black Tigers. Now a wanted killer, Dum joins the outlaws and soon gains a reputation as a steely never miss killer – but he still yearns for Rumpoey and she for him. But she is promised to another man - the man responsible for hunting the Black Tigers down.
The action too is exaggerated – more like speed reading a series of comic book panels and one almost expects too see a “Pow!” pop up on the screen. The shootouts have more of a spaghetti Western look to them than the early B&W Westerns – even to the point of having Morricone like music trumpeting in the background. The two face-off draws between Dum and Mahesuan are wonderful little minuets of camera movement, eye movement and perfect stillness that also echo the Sergio Leone films. The film is fairly violent but not meant to be taken at all seriously – willing victims stand out in the open in chorus lines to be machine gunned down, a missile hits one fellow and transports him off the floor for 30-feet until it explodes against a wall, bullets cause huge geysers of deep red blood. One even suspects that the geysers of blood contrasted against the blue shirts are simply another aesthetic that the director wants to add to his canvass as much as striving for a Peckinpah moment.
The film is awash in deep saturated colors – often set in stunning contrast to one another as in one perfect shot of Rumpoey attired in bright yellow, her red lipstick against her pale Gene Tierney like glamorous face, the room swathed in rich green and the moon blazing in the background. Or a scene on a marsh where everything looks murky blue except the impossibly red orchids that dot the water – and the water later turning into a blood like red. The colors are napalm on your eyeballs – joyful and imaginative – brighter than any film I have seen – an artificial world of colors painted onto our brain. In fact, one gorgeous scene – one of the face-offs – all takes place against a painted giant background of the sun breaking through the clouds – I have no idea why he chose to do this but it is magical.
This is a fabulous film – a pop explosion that attacks your sensory nerves in a gentle playful manner and enough humor and romance to keep you wanting to go further with these characters. It certainly may not be everyone’s cup of tea – and a few film critic reviews I came across had really negative reactions to it – but there is simply no other film I have seen that is like this. That it was the debut film for Wisit Sasanatieng astonishes me.

There is a Region 2 DVD as well as a Region 3 Thai DVD with subs and the VCD from Edko is excellent quality and also has subs. If you like the music as much as I did – a beautiful mix of Thai tear drenched ballads and up-tempo Thai folk fiddle music – there is also a great soundtrack available. Mirimax has the US rights to this film and in their often mystifying manner have been sitting on the film for 2 years while the hype disappeared and folks have purchased other DVD versions. I can’t imagine that they plan on releasing this in theaters but that would be my 2003 wish – to see this on the big screen and me planted in the front row.

My rating for this film: 9.0