Thailand (Lonely Planet, 13th Edition) - China Williams [53]
The leading couple of the action genre was Mitr Chaibancha and Petchara Chaowarat, a duo who starred in some 75 films together. Their last film was Insee Thong (Golden Eagle), in which Mit, playing the film’s hero, was tragically killed during the filming of a helicopter stunt.
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Criticine (www.criticine.com) is an online magazine about Southeast Asian cinema featuring Bangkok-based movie critics writing in English about new releases and industry news.
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Another beloved film of the era was Mon Rak Luk Thung, a musical rhapsodising Thai rural life. Isan musicals were a theatre darling during this era and re-emerged in 2001 with Monpleng Luk Thung FM (Hoedown Showdown) and Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s Monrak Transistor, which paid tribute to the music of Suraphol Sombatcharoen. In 2005 comedian-actor-director Petchtai Wongkamlao wrote, directed and starred in Yam Yasothon, a colourful homage to the 1970s musicals.
For a country renowned for its sense of fun, comedy will always be a guaranteed local moneymaker. The classic comedy flick of the 1960s was Ngern Ngern Ngern (Money, Money, Money), starring comedian Lor Tork. The modern comedies invariably feature gà·teu·i (transvestites and transsexuals), another guaranteed laugh in Thai humour. The 2000 film Satree Lek (Iron Ladies), directed by Yongyoot Thongkongtoon, dramatised the real-life exploits of a Lampang volleyball team made up almost entirely of gà·teu·i.
More important as an artistic inspiration, the director Rattana Pestonji is often credited as the father of Thai new wave. His 1957 movie Rong Raem Narok (Country Hotel) is a dark comedy set in a Bangkok bar and filmed using only one camera.
The current era boasts several generations of seriously good directors, a number of whom studied film abroad and are beloved in international film festivals. Nonzee Nimibutr is regarded as the most mainstream (and profitable) of the so-called new wave filmmakers. His 1998 release of Nang Nak was a retelling of a famous Thai spirit tale that had seen no fewer than 20 previous cinematic renderings. The film became one of the largest-grossing films in Thai history, out performing even Titanic. His follow-up films, like Ok Baytong (2003) and Queens of Langkasuka (2008), invited the Buddhist majority to learn more about the Muslim minority regions of Thailand. Queens of Langkasuka (2008) was an expensive blockbuster that caught the imagination of domestic and international film-goers; not a surprise, since grand historical epics tend to rake in the baht.
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A Century of Thai Cinema, by Dome Sukwong, is a glossy coffee-table book giving a visual history of film in the kingdom.
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Director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s films are gritty and satirical, and garner fans of cinema not just fans of Thailand. His debut film was Fun Bar Karaoke, a 1997 farce of Bangkok life in which the main characters are an ageing Thai playboy and his daughter. But it is Ruang Rak Noi Nid Mahasan (Last Life in the Universe; 2003), written by Prabda Yoon, that will secure him a position in the vault of international cinema classics. His most recent film Kham Phiphaksa Khong Mahasamut (Invisible Waves; 2006) has been described as the darkest yet and is set in Macau and Phuket.
One of Thai cinema’s proudest moments arrived when Cannes 2002 chose Sut Sanaeha (Blissfully Yours) for the coveted Un Certain Regard screening. Helmed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand’s leading cinéma-vérité director, the film dramatises a romance between a Thai woman and an illegal Burmese immigrant. Just two years later Apichatpong’s dreamlike Sut Pralat (Tropical Malady) won the Cannes Jury Prize.