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Reviews
Rak haeng Siam (2007)
Yes, this one is overlong, but . . .
Having seen the director's cut, which runs to 2 hours and 50 minutes, I almost wish I'd seen the full version at 3 hours and 7 minutes; it might have done a better job of clarifying some strange lurches toward the end, such as Mew's sudden change of heart with regard to performance, or exactly what was going on in Tong's mind besides awareness that his attempts at heterosexuality are miserable failures and his love for Mew painfully genuine and more than a little frightening.
As it stands at 170 minutes, I can imagine how some viewers are disappointed that the film doesn't categorize easily as "gay teen romance" or "family drama"; it's both. This is underscored by the double lie that Tong's mother Sunee has to contend with: on the one hand conspiring to bring in a fake daughter (June) to replace the missing one, whose absence resulted in the alcoholism of Korn, Sunee's husband and Tong's father; on the other, her insistence that her son abandon his feelings (and Mew) and conform to the heterosexual norm. I wonder if this parallelism is more sharply drawn in the cut footage?
In any case, Sunee seems to accept at length that deceptions only postpone and prolong pain, and seems to accept her son's nature during the oft-quoted Christmas tree scene. It then might strike the viewer as strange that Tong doesn't ride off happily into the sunset with Mew after all: it's as if his gratitude for his mother's blessing of his homosexual nature expresses itself by choosing family over the love of his life. Strange and even unfortunate as this may seem, it's not improbable, especially because with June's departure it's implied (if not made explicit -- again, one wonders what's on the cutting room floor) that Tong's responsibility for holding his family together will only increase.
There are other imbalances: As important as Mew is, we see virtually nothing of *his* family except for the grandmother, who understandably enough departs the scene early on. But I'll go against the tide and say that I found the acting largely convincing throughout. I say this in part because I remember having been an adolescent myself, in part because I think I've lived in Thailand long enough to know how Thai people behave and react.
What makes the film such tough going is not the need for a little tightening (although that would've helped), and not just the bittersweet ending, but the realization that all of the significant characters are dealing with a great deal of pain. Even the girl with the obsessive crush on Mew inspires more sympathy than derision.
Finally, an observation that's somewhat less trivial than it will sound: Mario Maurer has never looked better. The short haircut accentuates his facial expressions -- always so important in any kind of drama, and especially here, where he plays the rock in contrast to Mew's greater effusiveness (why am I reminded of the Heath Ledger character in Brokeback Mountain?). His subsequent return to normal haircut relegates him to the pallid, indifferently attractive Sino-Western look that characterizes virtually every guy on an ad poster in the Bangkok Skytrain. Although, come to think of it, often enough that guy is Mario Maurer.
Vento Seco (2020)
Even the sex is a cop out . . .
Basically a one-character film: a dumpy-looking middle-aged bear who scores above his attractiveness rating and is obsessed with sleazy erotic dreams (which are quite imaginatively filmed, if not quite on the level of, say, Fassbinder's *Querelle* in terms of color and lighting). Oh, and his jealousies.
The rest of the characters are seriously underdeveloped and not terribly interesting except perhaps for the female coworker who turns 40.
The oral sex looks to be very real, but the director cops out on the anal. I would've found it more honest if all the sex were either hinted at, or all of it genuine.
As far as the natural scenery is concerned, good lord has rampant capitalism made a wasteland out of Brazil.
1922 (2017)
Didn't bother finishing.
Ludicrously inept plot -- this is Stephen King?. Somehow we're supposed to believe that farmers, of all people the most adept at efficient killing next to, say, contract murderers, would perform a sloppy murder, and then get away with it, seeing as the victim had every reason NOT to vanish into thin air and her body was so poorly disposed of.
Worse, the victim is depicted as unrelievedly hateful, with no redeeming features: the drunk scene in particular lays it all on with ... a trowel? No, a forklift.
I gather that the plot was subsequently directed toward some great moral revelation . . . Oh gag me.
Thomas Jane's performance was quite good, almost good enough to compensate for the absurdly incongruous sci-fi horror soundtrack.