Thai Screwball
Feb. 18th, 2007 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
Last night was movie night with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mamishka, the local queen of obscure foreign films the world has never heard of XD A double bill of films by the Thai director Wisit Sasanatieng - I don't think I'd seen a Thai film at all before. Two very different films, surreal and brilliant in entirely different ways :-)
The first film we watched was Tears of the Black Tiger, a 1950s styled Thai gunslinging western movie. And I promise you, you did read that combination right.
The immediate thing that struck me about this film, from the opening frames, was the cinematography and the director's vision. I don't think I've been so directly and instantly floored by the use of colour and style in a film since I watched 'Hero' and 'Sin City'. The first few scenes with the heroine in her red dress and lipstick against monochrome forest, so beautifully framed, just wowed me, and that vision's not a moment of brilliance, it's there recurring throughout the entire film.
The film's an insane mix from start to finish, veering between mad western pastiche (with some moments of very vivid and actually quite disturbingly portrayed violence), fifties Hollywood melodrama, stylised surrealism and instants of truly hilarious farce. The latter sometimes come at (to western eyes anyway) oddly inappropriate times in the flow of the drama, but I know I've said that about Asian films before, so it may be a case of cultural expectations. For the first half an hour of this film, I was convinced it was going to be entirely brilliant - the cliches that were in there were subverted slightly in ways designed to throw the obvious assumptions, only to return later in full glory, and it alternated between making me laugh hysterically and stare in awe. Also, it had the best set of fake moustaches I've seen in a film in quite some time XD Sadly, it did lose its momentum part way through, particularly when it came to the romantic backstory and the 50s melodrama became a bit too literal rather than satirical.
The second, later film by the same director, was Citizen Dog, a very different look because it was set in modern-day Bangkok, and equally surreal in a completely polarised way. The trademark directorial beauty was there - not just in the gloriously pretty casts, which both films had in spades, but in shot choices and framing, though in a less stylised format. Wisit Sasanatieng's head is clearly a place of fantastical madness! But who couldn't love a film in which the loser hero has a zombie biker friend, a grandma reincarnated as a gecko living on his lampshade eating flies, and who provides a taxi service for a cynical chain-smoking teddy bear? (Yes, I actually did say teddy bear. Just go with it, okay?) And puppies! Puppies in blue dresses! Context really is everything XD
I kind of got a sense of deja vu with the second film - for a while, I thought it was going to be innovative genius, and then it seemed to become bogged down in its premises. Both films I felt could have lost twenty minutes and not missed them (and no, not necessarily the musical numbers some of the audience thought they could have passed on!) because they hammered home their points unnecessarily, but again, that may be a difference in cultural expectations. Overall, I preferred Tears of the Black Tiger, because it provided a greater contrast of styles and humour and drama through its craziness, whereas there was less to surprise in Citizen Dog once the initial madness had been set up. But both films had a lot to recommend them, while being far from flawless.
mamishka, the local queen of obscure foreign films the world has never heard of XD A double bill of films by the Thai director Wisit Sasanatieng - I don't think I'd seen a Thai film at all before. Two very different films, surreal and brilliant in entirely different ways :-)The first film we watched was Tears of the Black Tiger, a 1950s styled Thai gunslinging western movie. And I promise you, you did read that combination right.
The immediate thing that struck me about this film, from the opening frames, was the cinematography and the director's vision. I don't think I've been so directly and instantly floored by the use of colour and style in a film since I watched 'Hero' and 'Sin City'. The first few scenes with the heroine in her red dress and lipstick against monochrome forest, so beautifully framed, just wowed me, and that vision's not a moment of brilliance, it's there recurring throughout the entire film.
The film's an insane mix from start to finish, veering between mad western pastiche (with some moments of very vivid and actually quite disturbingly portrayed violence), fifties Hollywood melodrama, stylised surrealism and instants of truly hilarious farce. The latter sometimes come at (to western eyes anyway) oddly inappropriate times in the flow of the drama, but I know I've said that about Asian films before, so it may be a case of cultural expectations. For the first half an hour of this film, I was convinced it was going to be entirely brilliant - the cliches that were in there were subverted slightly in ways designed to throw the obvious assumptions, only to return later in full glory, and it alternated between making me laugh hysterically and stare in awe. Also, it had the best set of fake moustaches I've seen in a film in quite some time XD Sadly, it did lose its momentum part way through, particularly when it came to the romantic backstory and the 50s melodrama became a bit too literal rather than satirical.
The second, later film by the same director, was Citizen Dog, a very different look because it was set in modern-day Bangkok, and equally surreal in a completely polarised way. The trademark directorial beauty was there - not just in the gloriously pretty casts, which both films had in spades, but in shot choices and framing, though in a less stylised format. Wisit Sasanatieng's head is clearly a place of fantastical madness! But who couldn't love a film in which the loser hero has a zombie biker friend, a grandma reincarnated as a gecko living on his lampshade eating flies, and who provides a taxi service for a cynical chain-smoking teddy bear? (Yes, I actually did say teddy bear. Just go with it, okay?) And puppies! Puppies in blue dresses! Context really is everything XD
I kind of got a sense of deja vu with the second film - for a while, I thought it was going to be innovative genius, and then it seemed to become bogged down in its premises. Both films I felt could have lost twenty minutes and not missed them (and no, not necessarily the musical numbers some of the audience thought they could have passed on!) because they hammered home their points unnecessarily, but again, that may be a difference in cultural expectations. Overall, I preferred Tears of the Black Tiger, because it provided a greater contrast of styles and humour and drama through its craziness, whereas there was less to surprise in Citizen Dog once the initial madness had been set up. But both films had a lot to recommend them, while being far from flawless.
