Review: Buppha Arigato

• Written and directed by Yuthlert Sippapak
• Starring Supassara Thanachat, Charlie Potjes, Chalermpon Thikampornteerawong, Yok Teeranitayatarn, Aphichan Chaleumchainuwong, Thana Wityasuranan, Triwarat Chutiwatkhachorachai, Navin Yavapolkul
• Released in Thai cinemas on May 5, 2016; rated 18+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

Yuthlert Sippapak is one of the Thai film industry's more distinctive and prolific directors. His signature move is to throw all kinds of ideas into the blender and then somehow assemble them as mostly coherent films that I have more or less enjoyed over the years.

After a bit of a hiatus, he's back at it with Buppha Arigato (บุปผาอาริกาโตะ, a.k.a. Buppha Rahtree: A Haunting in Japan).

Not only does it blend the horror, comedy and romantic-drama genres, it's also an Asian cultural mix, with a blood-and-slapstick story about a Thai musician and a film crew visiting a winter resort in Japan, where they are haunted by Japanese-style ghosts as well as the ghost of a spurned young Thai woman. I also couldn't help but feel a bit of John Carpenter vibe, with perhaps a nod to Halloween.

Additionally, it is trading on a combination of well-known Thai movies, tying in with Yuthlert's own Buppha Rahtree franchise of ghost comedy-horrors and the hit 2003 film Fan Chan (แฟนฉัน, a.k.a. My Girl). The bulk of the cast are the boys from Fan Chan, all grown up, including that film's lead actor Charlie Potjes along with the schoolyard bully, Chalermpon "Jack" Thikampornteerawong. It's the first time all the guys have been reunited onscreen since they were children.

The story follows the familiar template of the Buppha Rahtree films, which dealt with the ghost of a vengeful heartbroken young woman haunting an apartment building, and mined comedy from the colorful procession of police, priests and shamans who are recruited to perform exorcisms.

Buppha Arigato changes things up by having the action take place in a rental lodge at a picturesque Japanese ski resort. And instead of one ghost, there are several. The most lethal is a knife-wielding mother and her creepy little boy, spirits of a family who stayed in the house years before but could not pay their rent.

Meanwhile, there's a young Thai woman named Buppha who comes to the resort on a solo trip to mend her broken heart. Seems she caught her boyfriend having sex with another woman. Somehow, she has passed away but her soul is hanging on at the lodge, and is drawn to Charlie and his crew because Charlie looks a bit like her cheating ex.

The lodge's shady landlord, a Thai expat portrayed by "Tar" Navin Yavapolkul, is aware of his property's status as a haunted house, and he has various clergymen brought in to get rid of the bad spirits. Among the bumbling exorcists is a Thai Buddhist monk who is hung over after having too much beer and a sake bomb the night before. His saffron robe is accessorized by expensive sunglasses and a designer handbag, reflecting an actual controversy about a jet-setting monk in Thai religious society. Later, a Thai Hindu priest takes a crack at the spirits. Neither are successful at much except getting plenty of laughs.

So it's up to Charlie, Jack and the rest of the gang to solve the mystery of why the ghosts are haunting the place.

It's a chance for the former child actor Charlie to stretch his dramatic chops, and to show his talent as an indie singer-songwriter. He gets an extended scene during the closing credits, with a stylishly shot close up of just him, his tenor voice and acoustic guitar.

Jack, now a ubiquitous TV personality and commercial pitchman, gets to play director, heading up the film unit that is comprised of other four other now-grown child actors from Fan Chan, namely Yok Teeranitayatarn, Aphichan Chaleumchainuwong, Thana Wityasuranan, Triwarat Chutiwatkhachorachai.

There is a passing of the torch, with former Buppha Ratree actress "Ploy" Chermarn Boonyasak putting in a cameo in a limbo dream sequence, and offering guidance to new-face actress Supassara Thanachat, who takes over the role.

But the real hero of Buppha Arigato is of course Yuthlert's long-time collaborator, actor and veteran film-industry hand Adirek "Uncle" Watleela, again playing a police officer as he has throughout the franchise, and in other films. Here, he's a Japanese cop, but helpfully speaks Thai, and he comes up with an unusual way of defeating the ghosts, involving the use of an umbrella and the Thai military's infamous divining-rod-like GT-200 "bomb detector".

Also, all the guys are required to strip down to their tighty-whitie underwear briefs, so at least these young emperors have a shred of dignity.

LPFF 2015 review: Spotlight on Cambodia

The Cambodian Space Project: Not Easy Rock 'n' Roll

Cambodia's constant struggle to reconcile its bloody Khmer Rouge past with the ancient legacy of Angkor and the push for modernity in the 21st century were common threads running through five movies at the sixth Luang Prabang Film Festival, which made Cambodia the subject of its first “Spotlight”. It showed there is more to Cambodian cinema than the works of its multi-award-winning veteran leading director Rithy Panh.

Curated in part by Sok Visal, Cambodia’s “Motion Picture Ambassador” to the Luang Prabang fest, the Spotlight devoted a full day to the country’s re-emerging cinema movement, with a diverse selection of four films. The line-up included the documentaries The Cambodian Space Project: Not Easy Rock ’n’ Roll and Still I Strive, martial-arts action in Hanuman and melodrama in The Last Reel. Shown on another day was a fifth Cambodian entry, the cult crime-comedy Gems on the Run, co-directed by Visal.

Cambodia’s “code of women’s conduct”, masked killers and arranged marriages were among the common themes linking the films.

Still I Strive

Referenced in at least three of the entries, that book that holds that Cambodian women should be polite, quiet and dutiful, is promptly tossed out by domineering female protagonists. In Not Easy Rock ’n’ Roll, a Phnom Penh bargirl undergoes a transformation from a mouse-like figure afraid of her own voice to a tigress-like diva rocker who could teach a thing or two to Cookie Lyon of TV’s Empire. In The Last Reel, a teenage girl jumps off the back of her gangster boyfriend’s motorbike to take up the mantle of movie producer and actress as she tries to reconstruct the missing reel of a 1970s historical epic. And in Gems on the Run, a plucky gun moll chooses love, and falls for the movie’s unlikely hero, a portly police officer who wants to be a singer.

A masked vigilante is out for revenge in Hanuman, which brings Cambodia’s ancient Bokator “pounding a lion” martial art out of the shadows. And it’s masked men who rob an armored car in Gems on the Run. Meanwhile, both the heroine in The Last Reel and the plus-sized leading man of Gems on the Run are seeking to escape from pending marriages arranged by social-climbing parents.

More martial arts are on display in the jawdropping and surprising documentary Still I Strive, which covers the orphan schoolchildren of the National Action Culture Association, an organization run by veteran actress Peng Phan. Having lost her own family during the Khmer Rouge years, she and her husband devote their lives to teaching arts to the orphans. With heartbreaking individual profiles of students, showing the hardships they faced in broken homes to a life of love and learning at the orphanage, the film follows their efforts to perform for the country’s arts-and-culture patron, Princess Bopha Devi.

Hanuman

Directed by Adam Pfleghaar and A. Todd Smith, Still I Strive has these remarkable youngsters acting in full-fledged dramatic segments, following a parallel quest in ancient times, in which their skills in music, dance, storytelling and stage combat are used to full effect. It's amazing.

The gritty Hanuman, meanwhile, is set in contemporary Phnom Penh, where a masked vigilante rises up to challenge the country’s culture of impunity and take revenge on criminals who killed his father. The masked man is also reunited with his estranged brother, a police officer who has been secretly trying to bring his father’s killers to justice himself. Directed by Italian filmmaker Jimmy Henderson, Hanuman is clearly inspired by The Raid, which vividly brought Indonesia’s pencak silat martial arts to world screens. Along with nods to Thailand’s Tony Jaa and Ong-Bak, Hanuman also revels in the lurid images of Italy’s spaghetti westerns and giallo slashers. It's not going to do for Cambodian action cinema what the The Raid did for its stars (who turn up in the new Star Wars), but it is the start of something, and I hope the Hanuman gang will regroup to make more of these types of films.

The Cambodian Space Project and The Last Reel both dealt with the vibrant Cambodian pop culture of the 1970s. Under the patronage of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, himself a multi-hyphenate musician, producer, director and star of his own movies, Cambodia’s cinematic golden age was paralleled by a rollicking music scene, which emulated American rock ’n’ roll. Both scenes were brought to an abrupt end in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took over, emptied the cities and put the populace to work making the country into an agrarian utopia. Intellectuals and artists didn’t fit into that scheme, and were targets for persecution and death.

The Last Reel

The forces of music and film combined in The Cambodian Space Project: Not Easy Rock ’n’ Roll, which surveys the resurgence of Cambodian rock and its revival under an unusual band, the Cambodian Space Project, which began in 2009 when Australian pop-artist and musician Julien Poulson heard the extraordinary voice of bargirl Srey Thy performing karaoke. The two had little in common but music, but it was enough.

The band is similar to another outfit, the U.S.-based Dengue Fever, which were featured on the soundtrack to Matt Dillon’s 2002 made-in-Cambodia drama City of Ghosts and have been the subject of their own documentary. But while that band’s frontwoman Chhom Nimol was influenced by the slain 1970s Cambodian singer Ros Sereysothea, the Cambodian Space Project’s Thy has taken the more earthy and grounded vocalist Pan Ron has her major influence.

Directed by German Mark Eberle, The Cambodian Space Project: Not Easy Rock ’n’ Roll follows the band’s journey from the bars to Phnom Penh to music clubs in Sydney, Paris and Hong Kong. Clips include the band’s landmark performance at the Cambodia International Film Festival, providing live musical accompaniment to Georges Melies’ 1902 science-fiction epic A Trip to the Moon, the style of which was emulated by Cambodian filmmakers in the 1970s and by Eberle in fantastic animation sequences that imagined the photogenic Thy as an actress in an Angkorian sci-fi epic. Making the film turned out to be an epic undertaking for Eberle, who at one point was drafted to play bass in the band in order to keep both the band and his film project going.

It was a hit with viewers at the Luang Prabang Film Festival's daytime venue, who gave it the festival’s first Audience Choice Award.

Cambodia’s lost cinematic golden age, artfully covered in French-Cambodian director Davy Chou’s Golden Slumbers, unspools further in The Last Reel, a handsomely mounted melodrama that was the country’s official submission to next year’s Academy Awards. Directed by Kulikar Sotho, who rose to prominence as a location supervisor on Angelina Jolie’s made-in-Cambodia action romp Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The Last Reel follows a young woman who discovers old film reels in a dilapidated Phnom Penh movie palace and realizes that the beautiful actress in the movie is her mother. Secrets of her family’s Khmer Rouge past surface as the young women sets out to recreate the movie’s missing final reel, with help from a motley crew of her biker boyfriend, the theater's elderly projectionist and film students.

Gems on the Run

The Last Reel strained my brain with its soap-opera leanings and a time-travelling story that omitted an entire generation between the Khmer Rouge era and the teenagers of today, whose grandparents, not parents, would have been Khmer Rouge cadre and captives. But for reasons of sentimentality, nostalgia and, I suppose, vanity, there was a compression in time that took away from the weight of the film's dramatic heft.

I liked Gems on the Run better, and I told Sok Visal so at one point during the fest. He thought I was kidding, but then he doesn't know me very well. Directed by Visal and his French friend Quentin Clausin, Gems on the Runs is exactly the type of film I actually enjoy, with its sprawling, shaggy-dog tale of a portly police officer who wants to be a singer getting mixed up with an estranged childhood friend, his ladyfriend and stolen diamonds. It is, essentially, a Coen Bros farce made in Cambodia. Visal, whose family made their escape to Thailand and then France during the Khmer Rouge era and made his return to Cambodia in 1993 to produce music, is a first-time filmmaker with Gems. The film was something of a flop on commercial release, though the soundtrack did well. It's got a cult following, of which I'm now a member. Visal, for his part, wants to do a horror film next, and I can't wait to see it.

The rotund leading man, Cheky Athiporn, was a photographer before he got put in front the camera for his eye-popping star turn in Gems on the Run.

Other actors provided more connections between the films in Luang Prabang's Spolight. Among them was actress Ma Rynet, star of The Last Reel who also appears in Hanuman. And the girl’s mother (or should it be her grandmother?) is portrayed by Dy Saveth, a Golden Age star. Saveth, who famously survived the Khmer Rouge era because she missed a Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh in 1975, also appears in Cambodian Space Project, imparting advice to the budding diva Thy.

Further talent ties are cemented by the appearance of hard-working actor Rous Mony, who plays the sneering villain in Hanuman, The Last Reel and Gems. I liked to think he was also lurking the background in Space Project and Still I Strive.

Here's Wise Kwai's ratings, for those keeping score:

The Cambodian Space Project: Not Easy Rock 'n' Roll: 4/5
Hanuman: 3/5
Still I Strive: 5/5
The Last Reel: 2/5
Gems on the Run: 4/5

Sok Visal talks about Cambodian cinema with Cambodian Space Project director Mark Eberle. Wise Kwai photo

(Adapted from an article in The Nation)

LPFF 2015 reviews: Above It All, The Search for Weng Weng

Above It All (ນ້ອຍ) – It's the story of two people named Noy who want the freedom to love the way they want to love, not the way society says they should love. One is a gay medical student who has yet to come out of the closet to his parents and the girlfriend from a wealthy family they want him to marry. The other Noy is a Hmong college student who wants to buck eons-old tribal traditions and marry someone of her own choosing, not some stranger her father has found.

Outside of Laos, it'll be hard to explain why Above It All is so gosh-darned groundbreaking. But it is the first Lao feature film to specifically address homosexuality. The Hmong angle is interesting as well. I'm just not sure the two taboo love stories work together, as one might cancel out the potential audience for the other.

Much anticipated in certain circles, Above It All is the sophomore feature from Anysay Keola of the Lao New Wave Cinema collective, who debuted in 2012 with the astonishing thriller At the Horizon. It's best to keep your expectations in check. With Above It All, Anysay seems to have made a conscious stylistic choice to make his movie just like the Lao PDR's public-service and propaganda videos. The performances are old-fashionedly wooden and emotionally flat. The pacing is frustratingly slow. At one point during the film's world premiere as the official opener of the sixth Luang Prabang Film Festival, I could sense the audience's impatience, and folks were murmuring, "go on, kid, tell your dad you're gay." Then, a beat too late, Noy says it, "Dad, I like men." And everyone cheered. I think Lao people are ready for more of these types of films.

The lady Noy, meanwhile, has struck up a friendship with a young man in Vientiane, where she has been working as a waitress to put herself through college. In a way-too-cute coincidence, her man Sack happens to be the other Noy's rock-musician younger brother, the guy who has been a huge disappointment to his father. If only dad knew Sack's brother Noy was gay.

As she's ready to graduate from college, Noy's parents show up, and her father insists that she marry a Hmong gentleman in the U.S., whom she has never met. This is apparently a thing now among the Hmong people in Laos, in which Hmong daughters are being married off to, say, Hmong dentists in Minnesota, to support the impoverished family back home.

Above It All has its moments when it approaches the intensity of At the Horizon. Lady Noy gets to tell off a snotty restaurant customer who is badmouthing Hmong women. She receives backing from Sack. A surreal car-wreck serves to further bind the two stories together, and make the Dr. Noy a hero, possibly redeeming himself in his stubborn father's eyes. (3/5)

The Search for Weng Weng – Wearing an actual pith helmet like he's on an archaeological dig, cult-video purveyor/filmmaker Andrew Leavold descends into the heart of darkness in his obsessive quest to untangle the shrouds of myth from bleak reality in The Search for Weng Weng.

The 2013 documentary is another essential chapter from the 1970s and '80s era of exploitation filmmaking in the Philippines. It was a time the Filipino people would rather forget, so it's been left to foreigner genre-film fans to fill in the blanks. Previously, the scene was overviewed in Mark Hartley's informative and entertaining 2010 documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed!, which has since led to Not Quite Hollywood, covering Ozploitation, and the more recent Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.

In Weng Weng, the Australian Leavold goes to the Philippines to track down clues about one of his obsessions – a 2-foot-9-inch movie star known as Weng Weng. Very nearly forgotten if not for Leavold, Weng Weng was a novelty bit player who was elevated to the level of action star in a string of early '80s spaghetti-and-hotdog westerns and Bond-movie spoofs such as D'Wild Wild Weng, Agent 00 and For Y'ur Height Only.

With the help of old-timer actors, directors, film editors and other friendly characters like "Rene the Legman", Leavold circles ever closer to the depressing truth about Weng Weng, whose tiny, childlike figure was the source of much mirth for movie-goers for just a blip in time. As a public figure, the diminutive Weng Weng (real name Ernesto de la Cruz) was built up into a larger-than-life figure. Trained in martial arts as a child, he was not only a movie star, but also a playboy with multiple girlfriends as well as a secret agent for the Marcos regime. In truth, he was a graceful martial artist, but lived a sad, lonely existence under the control of opportunistic husband-and-wife movie producers, who "adopted" Ernesto and saw him as a yardstick-sized cash cow rather than a human being.

It's full of bizarre revelations, but none are more surreal than when the documentary is hijacked by none other than the Philippines' former first lady Imelda Marcos, who draws Leavold and his band of cult-movie geeks into her rich pageant of self-aggrandizement.

Running just over 90 minutes, The Search for Weng Weng has a running time that belies the epic story of its making, which took eight years and cost Leavold mortages on his Brisbane video shop and brought him to kickstart the Kickstarter era in self-funded indie filmmaking. Such dedication definitely makes Weng Weng a doc you should order. (5/5)

Other films I've caught so far at the Luang Prabang Film Festival include Lao TV star Jear Pacific's latest hilarious horror-comedy-romance Huk Ey Ly 2 (Really Love 2). It had the audience in stitches with its Thai-TV-style slapstick. Judging from crowd response alone, it should be the winner of the festival's new audience award. But will the cheers of the Lao movie-goers translate to the clicks on a tablet screen that are supposed to be made as viewers pour out of the venue?

I was also happy to finally see the Thai country comedy Phoobao Thai Baan Isaan Indy (ผู้บ่าวไทบ้าน อีสานอินดี้), which was released in Thai cinemas last year. Made in the Northeastern Thai province of Khon Kaen, PBTB is a representative of a regional cinema movement of Isaan films that could easily be exported to Laos, to play in the new Platinum multiplex in Vientiane.

Review: SPL 2: A Time for Consequences

• Directed by Cheang Pou-soi
• Starring Tony Jaa, Wu Jing, Simon Yam, Zhang Jin, Louis Koo
• Released in Thai cinemas on September 19, 2015; rated 15+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

You know SPL 2: A Time for Consequences is going to be a different kind of Tony Jaa movie when the stern Thai martial-arts star is introduced wearing ice skates, and he promptly falls on his ass.

Indeed, the reinvention of Jaa's career, post-Sahamongkol, continues apace with SPL 2, Jaa's first, and much-anticipated, foray into Hong Kong action films.

In a supporting role alongside a cast of Hong Kong and Chinese stars, here's a Jaa who takes a page from Jackie Chan's playbook, playing the nice guy. He's immediately a sympathetic character, taking his young daughter to a Bangkok ice rink. After he falls down and is helpfully brought a comical penguin-shaped skating aid to stay upright, his character Chatchai's cute little girl turns around and has blood streaming from her nose. She is, of course, very ill, and in need of a rare type of bone marrow.

The only match, according to the movie medical database, is a Hong Kong police officer named Kit. And because this is a Hong Kong movie, a crazily elaborate plot must be constructed to put Kit and Chatchai on a collision course.

Kit has gone deep undercover in an operation to bring down Hung, a notorious trafficker in human organs who, perhaps not ironically, needs an organ transplant himself. Louis Koo milks his credit as "guest star" for all its worth, brandishing an evil cane and wearing a surgical mask as he orders his minions to do his bidding. On the verge of death, the Hong Kong kingpin is preparing to head to Thailand for an operation that will swap out his heart for the ticker of his own brother.

In Thailand, the Hung operation is overseen by a perfectly coiffed, three-piece-suited prison warden (Zhang Jin). He has an entire secret wing of his prison, where he keeps the victims of human trafficking under lock and key until their organs are needed on the black market. That seems to be a constant with foreign co-productions made in Thailand – there's often some angle involving organ trafficking or people smuggling.

Anyway, it's that very prison where Jaa's Chatchai works. To earn more money for his daughter's hospitalization, he agrees to get on the payroll of the corrupt warden, which sets him up for the meeting with Kit.

SPL 2 is a sequel-in-name-only to a terrific 2005 crime thriller that had Donnie Yen as a tough cop throwing down against the formidable Sammo Hung. The SPL sequel has been in development ever since then, and what has finally emerged is a completely different story. There's no Donnie or Sammo, but Wu Jing was in the first one, in a memorable supporting role as a blade-wielding thug, as was Simon Yam, as the head of the undercover police squad. Yam is back as a senior cop, but it's different character, overseeing the operation that sent Kit down the rabbit hole.

After a bit of running around in Hong Kong, and a big shoot-out at a cruise-ship terminal, the action shifts to Thailand, where Wu Jing ends up in prison, face to face with the guard who wants his bone marrow. Only Chatchai doesn't know that Kit is the potential donor. So a lot of time is eaten up getting the two to realize they have a much deeper connection than they ever imagined.

In the Thai-dubbed version screening in Bangkok, there was an added layer of unintended hilarity as Chatchai, in a prison cell with the bone-marrow donor he's seeking, uses an app on his phone to translate between Thai and Cantonese, to get Wu Jing's character to call the guy Chatchai thinks is still in Hong Kong. Because it's dubbed, even the Cantonese parts are in Thai, so all the lines are spoken the same twice. Hey, the audience needed a good laugh about then.

SPL 2 fares better when there's no CGI wolves or bits of bone marrow to clutter things up, because that's when the action takes place.

Aside from the Hong Kong shootout, there's a great scene in a doctor's office where cops have Hung's injured brother on lockdown. Here, a blade-wielding thug (Zhang Chi) is introduced to great effect.

Back in Thailand, there's a prison riot, giving the evil warden a chance to show off his martial-arts prowess.

Later, Yam's character is trussed up and taken to a scuzzy warehouse where bodies are hacked up. People in various states of disrepair are hanging around, as if they sold off a limb to be able to survive one more day.

In a scene that might have made his late mentor Panna Rittikrai proud, Jaa uses a prison bus to smash the place, and he acquires chains that he wraps around his arms, to add even more heft to his Muay Thai punches.

The big climactic setpiece takes place in a ritzy five-star resort hospital where Hung is to have his operation. Here's where the blade-wielding dude from Hong Kong comes back and joins in the mayhem along with the fierce warden. Wu Jing does his kung fu thing, with lightning-fast punches and sweeping kicks, while Jaa flies back and forth, all knees and elbows, as if he's being shot out of a cannon.

SPL 2 is the third in a trio of Tony Jaa movies this year, following his separation from the Thai studio Sahamongkol, where he made Ong-Bak and Tom-Yum-Goong. First was his big Hollywood debut in Fast and Furious 7, which featured him in short but crucial scenes with Paul Walker. Next to be released was the local co-production Skin Trade, which had Jaa in a leading role alongside action star Dolph Lundgren, as two rogue cops facing off a human-smuggling mobster played by Ron Perlman.

And though I enjoyed Furious 7 and Skin Trade, SPL 2 is my favorite of the three, and it's the type of thing I'd hope to see more of from the Thai action star.

Related posts:

• In Thai cinemas: Behind the Painting, No Escape, SPL 2

Review: Red Wine in the Dark Night

• Written and directed by Tanwarin Sukkhapisit
• Starring Pongsatorn Sripinta, Steven Isarapong Fuller, Krittachapon Thananara, Nontapat Intarasuan, Sutthinat Uengtrakul, Sakdinan Choosuwan, Pachara Kuerkanchanaporn
• Released in Thai cinemas on July 23, 2015; rated 18+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

Tossed on the trash heap of society, gays have carved out their own weird little world in Tanwarin Sukkhapisit's Khuen Nan Red Wine in the Dark Night (คืนนั้น red Wine in the dark Night).

The story involves an innocent young soul named Wine, a petite guy who is introduced stripping down to his tighty-whities for a hot make-out session with his current boyfriend, a jock named Tee. There's trouble between the two, because Tee won't come out as gay, and he says the time has come to knuckle down, find a girlfriend, get married, etc. All that boring stuff.

But he agrees to one last meeting with Wine, in an abandoned skyscraper under construction. It's really just a dramatic set up that leaves Wine with a bleeding wound on his knee. Then, Wine hears a faint voice calling for help, leading him to find a mysterious stranger who is too weak to move. Wine tries to revive the guy with a convenience store pastry and bottled water, but the poor fellow can stomach neither. However, Wine's wounded knee is of interest, and the weakened stranger slithers over, grabs a mouthful of kneecap and starts sucking blood.

Along with red-tinged eyes (the contact lens is clearly visible), it further turns out that the mysterious Mister Bloodsucker is also an amnesiac, and remembers neither his name nor his past. He's a blank slate. Wine christens him Night, and Night takes a liking to the kid.

Soon, the stranger is installed in an apartment that Wine's sugar-daddy other boyfriend Boy keeps for the two to meet in.

However, there remains the problem of Night's weird dietary requirements. Various kinds of animal blood is presented in juice bottles for Night to try, but none are palatable.

So Wine sees no choice but to find a blood donor, and he kidnaps his old boyfriend Tee. When Night asks Wine where he got the blood, Wine explains it's from a "buffalo", which generated chuckles with a Saturday afternoon audience of middle-aged women at a Bang Kapi multiplex.

So here's where Wine is heading down a morally dubious path. And it's here where Red Wine in the Dark Night has parallels to another queer Thai feature film released this year, the mystery thriller The Blue Hour (Onthakan, อนธการ). But while The Blue Hour is heavy and solidly dramatic, with arthouse pretensions, Red Wine is lighter, reflecting its commercial aims as a widely released mainstream film.

Sex-wise, things are kept clean, with naughty bits covered up by strategically bunched-up bedsheets. The hottest it gets are the male-on-male liplocks and scenes of the boys in their skivvies, of which there are many.

This is a Tanwarin film, so there's a lot of humor, with more chuckles coming as Wine tries to suss out what Night's deal is. He's not vampire, Night reasons, because he doesn't have fangs. So he knows that much about life. But then he's also sensitive to light.

And it's a strange universe that Tanwarin has concocted out of a little corner of Bangkok, with a canalside path and tiny city park with a swing being one main location, aside from condo rooms. Lighting cues add to a spooky atmosphere, especially in the abandoned, under-construction skyscraper.

Certain things trigger Night's faulty memory, such as the discovery of a guitar in a garbage pile. But as those memories come back, the pressure is piling on Wine.

Tee's friends, a hilarious bunch of jocks, all with the same slicked-back '50s hairstyle, running shorts and NBA practice jerseys, keep coming around to hassle Wine about the whereabouts of their pal. They don't necessarily care that their best buddy is gay – that's not the issue – they just want him returned.

And Wine's slightly older businessman friend Boy (Krittachapon Thananara) keeps calling, wanting to meet up at the apartment, and he's growing increasingly tired of the same old lame excuses Wine has about having to go "help my mother" or somesuch. I like how Boy's ready to throw down at a moment's notice, with a pair of handcuffs at the ready.

In the gay community, there has been much fuss over Fluke, a cult figure who is described by one fan as "sex on legs". I don't quite get the appeal, but then he's not my type. But I recognize that Fluke is a fine, expressive actor, who fits the sought-after archetype of the vulnerable wisp of a leading man being cast in movies like this. Perhaps in another era, he would be Juliet to a more-masculine Romeo.

As Night, Stephen Isarapong Fuller (or Fuehrer, depending on how the R's and L's roll off your tongue) is playing to a type – the mysterious lonesome stranger who arrives to shake things up. He played a similar role in Tanwarin's cute ghost romance Threesome.

Related posts:

• In Thai cinemas: Red Wine in the Dark Night, Latitude 6, Mon Love Sib Muen

Review: Chalui Tae Khob Fah (Lost in Seoul)

• Directed by Adirek Watleela and Suchart Makhawimarn
• Starring Mek Mekwattana, Nachat Juntapun, Zuvapit Traipornworakit, Nichkhun Horvejkul
• Released in Thai cinemas on June 4, 2015; rated 13+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

Rags-to-riches stories of struggling musicians looking for their big break are a dime a dozen, so journeyman producer Adirek "Uncle" Watleela got a real bargain with Chalui Tae Khob Fah (ฉลุย แตะขอบฟ้า, a.k.a. Lost in Seoul), which is a remake of a movie he first did in 1988.

The original, about two country lads looking to take Bangkok by storm, is repurposed for the K-pop era, and sends the bumbling heroes from Bangkok to Seoul, where they dream of bringing Thai rock to the uptight corporate ranks of South Korea's entertainment machine. Their big inspiration is a fellow Thai, Nichkhun Horvejkul, who is famous as the Thai guy in the boyband 2PM.

The story starts off in a dream sequence with Nichkhun as a pizza-delivery guy. Uncle and co-director Suchart Makhawimarn seem to be taking their cues from Christopher Nolan as they aim to keep things as off-kilter as possible, with a rapid succession of dreams, flashbacks and sight gags to propel the action as they introduce the two lead characters – long-haired guitarist Pong (Mek "Jessie" Mekwattana) and his singer pal Tong (Nachat "Nicky" Juntapun).

Amid this rapidly moving shell-game of a comedy, one thing becomes quickly apparent – Pong and Tong are no-talent hacks. But they're nice enough fellows, and their enthusiasm makes up somewhat for their lack of finessed dance moves. But behind their earthworm-like shimmying, it's all empty – they are lipsynching to a recording, and their instruments, which are just hollow shells, are unplugged.

But it doesn't matter. Uncle, well-versed in the art of showbiz hocus-pocus, manages to keep up a breakneck level of energy. The Thai Blues Brothers continue to practice their music on their rooftop and dream of their big break, with support from their endlessly cheerful comic neighbor (Phongthep Anurat), who becomes their manager. The suspense comes from the wonder of how long can the energy be sustained, and, will these sad clowns somehow have what it takes?

Uncle, as always, can't resist inserting references to his other movies. So the boys, in their apartment decorated by a Black Sabbath vinyl clock (points added), a Good Charlotte poster (points deducted) and toilet stool for a desk chair (points added), pop a DVD into a portable player. It's Tears of the Black Tiger, the melodramatic western by Wisit Sasanatieng that Uncle co-produced. It's a scene where two male characters pray together and seal a blood bond.

And, I'm pretty sure that's the two actors from the original Chalui Tae Kob Fah (literally Touch the Sky) popping up in another scene to give the younger lads encouragement. Later on, Pong and Tong find a DVD for Yuthlert Sippapak's Chiang Khan Love Story, which Uncle produced only last year. And watch for Uncle in a cameo as a cop.

Like the movie's characters, Chalui Tae Khob Fah gets by on sheer amiability. The boys are guys you wouldn't mind hanging out with for a night, and the movie is like that too. It spends roughly half its time goofing around in Bangkok before jetting off to Seoul, and I hardly noticed an hour had gone by.

Once in Seoul, where the production values are eyepopping, the boys rapidly go through the usual succession of adventures – getting mixed up with mobsters, street hoods and bent cops. Only the Illinois Nazis are missing. They lose their money and passports and then fumble their way into another situation that leads to them making friends with colorful locals.

There's the usual succession of nods to Korean culture, which have become stock-in-trade for Thai-South Korean productions. The gold standard of these remains GTH's blockbuster romance Guan Muen Ho (Hello Stranger). Others have included Poj Arnon's Kao Rak Thee Korea (Sorry Saranghaeyo), Wisit and Michael Shaowanasai's short Iron Pussy: A Kimchi Affair for the Busan-backed Camellia and Prachya Pinkaew's Bangkok-set South Korean martial-arts comedy The Kick.

Thanks to Oldboy, we must have a wriggling octopus, and I'd be disappointed if there weren't any octopuses. But there's also Korean theater and music, thanks to a young woman named Meehwa, her mother and their friends. Of course, she turns out to be half-Thai, and can serve as the boys' translator, helping them get jobs and fast-talk their way out of sticky situations. If it seems like she's everywhere, it's because she is. It's singer-actress "Baitoei" Zuvapit Traipornworakit in a dual role as Meewha and as Bangkok neighborhood doll Tukdta. So there's enough of Baitoei to go around for both of the guys.

One convenient situation after another befalls Pong and Tong as they try to land an audition with an executive at a Korean record label who they first met on a drunken night out in Bangkok. Boyband member "Buck" Nichkhun turns up again, and agrees to help the guys, because they are fellow Thais. Because that's overseas Thai code. Or something.

Soon, we're all singing along to a street-performer backed rendition of the anthem "Arirang", complete with classical Korean instruments, a bicycle drum set and crunchy Thai rock-guitar power chords.

Chalui Tae Khob Fah is the third release for Transformation Films, the new company formed by the former Film Bangkok producer pair of Uncle and Sa-nga Chatchairungruang. Other features so far have been last year's award-winning Chiang Khan Love Story by Yuthlert and this past February's romantic comedy Single Lady Phror Khoei Me Fan, directed by Thanakorn Pongsuwan (Fireball).

Like the others, Chalui Tae Khob Fah has performed very modestly at the local box office, with earnings of 1.5 million baht in its first week, trailing far, far behind the Hollywood behemoths Spy, San Andreas, Tomorrowland and Mad Max: Fury Road. At last count, Chalui had only doubled its first week's earnings, but it remains in theaters thanks to Transformation's partnership with Major Cineplex, Thailand's biggest multiplex operator. If it were anyone else's film, it would have been booted out after a few days.

Despite iffy box-office prospects – hardly anyone in Thailand is watching Thai films these days unless they come from GTH – we'll likely be seeing more of this type of thing. Also backing Chalui Tae Khob Fah was the Korean entertainment mega-firm CJ E&M Film Division, which is separately joining up with Major Cineplex in a three-year 10-film deal for more Thai-South Korean co-productions, likely from Transformation, or the half-dozen or so other Major Cineplex-backed production companies.

See also:

• CJ enters joint venture with Major Cineplex [Film Business Asia]

Review: Skin Trade

• Directed Ekachai Uekrongtham
• Starring Tony Jaa, Dolph Lundgren, Ron Perlman, Michael Jai White, Celina Jade, Peter Weller, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa
• Released in Thai cinemas on April 23, 2015; rated 18+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

In order to have fight scenes, you must first have enemies, and Skin Trade gives Phanom “Tony Jaa” Yeerum plenty of those to deal with.

Along with roomfuls of anonymous henchmen to mow down, the Ong-Bak star also gets featured fights with experienced stars, something fans always clamor for. In Skin Trade, Jaa tangles with his much-taller co-star, action veteran Dolph Lundgren, a guy who has gone toe-to-toe with Rocky. And there’s Michael Jai White, the martial-artist and general bad-you-know-what. The Black Dynamite star gets into a knock-down, drag-out scene with Jaa.

The story is the barest of set-ups, standard Bangkok-noir elements that make up the canon of English-language Thai productions, in which foreigner gangsters are somehow allowed to operate without impunity. In Skin Trade (คู่ซัดอันตราย, Koo Sat Antarai), it’s a sleazebag family of Serbians who are trafficking young women through their network of gentlemen’s clubs, brothels and porn studios.

But unusually for a Thai film, some of the action is filmed overseas, with Vancouver, British Columbia, standing in for Newark, New Jersey, where a police officer (Lundgren) is leading an investigation against a former Serbian war criminal and current gangland kingpin. He’s played by Hollywood character actor Ron Perlman, who luxuriates in this thick bad accent.

The opening deftly toggles back and forth between Bangkok and the Garden State. On one side of the world, Royal Thai Police special branch officer Tony twirls around a luxury hotel room full of bad guys, to rescue a farmgirl from a life as a sex slave. Meanwhile, in Newark, there’s the discovery of a shipping container full of dead women, a scene that should resonate with fans of Season 2 of The Wire. Officer Nick gets into a dockland shoot-out, and ends up plugging the favorite son of the Serbian mobster. He retaliates by blowing up Nick’s house with a rocket, which leaves his wife and daughter dead and Nick with a facial scar.

The action then shifts back to Thailand, where a fugitive Nick arrives to a police welcome at Suvarnabhumi airport. A dodgy carpark shootout leaves Tony’s Thai cop partner dead and makes Nick an even bigger target, thanks to dirty double dealing by White’s character.

From there, Skin Trade proceeds at a mostly breakneck pace, running and gunning from tin-shack riverside slums to dusty warehouses to finally bring together to the two stars and turn them from enemies to friends. In the melee, Nick, in pursuit of the gangster Viktor, grabs a dirtbike and busts through a Chinese opera stage, while Tony pursues on foot. Of course, it's a chance to use his trademark acrobatic running and somersaulting through crowded market lanes, always a thrill.

There’s the featured fight with Lundgren, beautifully staged in a rice warehouse, and another with White. And in addition to the punch-ups, there are plenty of explosions, including a retaliatory rocket-launcher firing that brings down a helicopter.

Each actor gets their moment to shine. For Jaa, it’s a chance to try out new English-language skills. He’s always been a man of few words, mostly having to do with the location of a missing elephant. But he now has quips like “negotiation is over” or “you will rot in hell”, best said with a menacing hiss as someone is being dangled off the ledge of a five-star hotel.

Lundgren, with a polished granite exterior, is an big old softie inside, and his character is given just enough of a family life to make him someone with whom the audience can sympathize.

As the Serbian crime boss Viktor, Perlman sinks deep into that Eastern European accent, rolling off such phrases as “you have a strong heartbeat … there is a musicality to the rhythm”. The Hellboy star even gets to puff on one of his beloved cigars while dishing out punishment.

A handful of supporting characters also stand out. Celina Jade from TV’s Arrow is Tony’s girlfriend and playful sparring partner. A former sex-trafficking victim, she dons angel wings to work as an undercover informant in the Serbian club.

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, a veteran of Showdown in Little Tokyo and other Lundgren pictures, turns up as a local polician, who has just enough influence to keep the cops away from Viktor's rackets.

And RoboCop himself, Peter Weller, is Lundgren’s police chief back home. He gets a healthy bit of exposition to deliver, and a possibility of seeing more action in a sequel.

Even seasoned Thai character actor Sahajak “Puu” Boonthanakit gets his licks in. He’s played cops and bad guys in countless English-language productions here, but his perverted porn director this time around is especially memorable. Hopefully, he received counseling after the cameras stopped rolling.

It’s all held together thanks to execution by director Ekachai Uekrongtham, a helmer who is known for theater productions, such as Chang and Eng, about the original Siamese twins, and arthouse movies like Pleasure Factory, about Singapore’s Geylang red-light district. But his work on the 2003 transgender-fighter biopic Beautiful Boxer and his current Muay Thai Live stage show in Bangkok made him a natural choice to help showcase Jaa’s first headline effort as an international star. There’s no muss and no fuss, and the style is consistent, whether the action is taking place in a New Jersey police station or a bar on Sukhumvit Soi 7/1. Framing is still and steady, allowing viewers to take in the full picture of the action and feel the impact.

Talents behind the scenes who surely aided those efforts include cinematographer Ben Nott (Daybreakers), veteran production designer Ek Iemchuan (Tears of the Black Tiger and Ong-Bak 2) and stunt coordinator and second-unit director Dian Hristov (Expendables 2).

Produced by Craig Baumgarten, Lundgren and Jaa’s Bangkok-based manager and producer Michael Selby, Skin Trade is a project that Lundgren helped write and has been trying to get made for many years. It came to fruition when he met Jaa while working on a Thai film called Ai Noon Gangnam (A Man Will Rise), an intriguing "Eastern western" that was set up at Sahamongkol Film.

Much of the news about Skin Trade has been overshadowed by a contract dispute between Jaa and Sahamongkol, where he made Ong-Bak, Tom-Yum-Goong and the aborted A Man Will Rise. The studio went to court to try and to prevent the Thai release of Fast and Furious 7, Jaa’s Hollywood debut in which he has a small but memorable turn as a villain who tangles with Paul Walker.

Skin Trade gives Jaa a chance to prove himself as a leading man alongside Hollywood heavyweights, and he acquits himself well. Coming up next is Jaa’s Hong Kong debut in Sha Po Leng II. But perhaps a sequel to Skin Trade ought to also be in the works?

Related posts:

• Hi-Jaa! Skin Trade opens in Thai cinemas

LPFF 2014 review: Vientiane in Love

Longing for Love

• Directed by Anysay Keola, Phanumad Disattha, Vannaphone Sitthirath, Xaisongkham Induangchanthy
• World premiere at the Luang Prabang Film Festival, December 6, 2014
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

There's a feeling of urgency or maybe even impatience when it comes to the burgeoning Lao film industry. In the decades since the Vietnam War era, filmmaking in the Lao People's Democratic Republic was strictly for propaganda efforts under the purview of the government, but it was chronically hampered by a shortage of funding, resources and properly trained professionals.

The digital photography age has changed all that. And after decades of being pent up, commercial filmmaking in Laos is beginning. Showing an eagerness to get to work and tell their stories, the directors involved with the collective called Lao New Wave Cinema have put together the five-segment omnibus Vientiane in Love (ຮັກນີ້ທີ່ວຽງຈັນ), telling short stories about romance and relationships in Laos' capital city.

For the world premiere at the Luang Prabang Film Festival, the package was led with Longing for Love (Kid Hod Kuam Hak), written and directed by Anysay Keola, a founding LNWC member who made his debut with the thriller At the Horizon.

Here, Anysay shows his knack for broad comedy and the conventions of Asian rom-coms – slide-whistle sound effects, bloody noses and all – with an amusing story of a photographer who earns his living taking pictures of couples at the city's Patuxai arch monument. One day a single young woman asks Mon to take her photo and as she comes into focus, she starts crying and says she's just out of a bad relationship. The two strike up a friendship, but the comically homely Mon has fallen hopelessly in love and thinks he has a chance for something more with the pretty red-haired girl.

Next up was I'm Fine, Thank You (Kob Jai), written and directed by Phanumad Disattha, director of LNWC's sophomore feature, the country comedy Hak Aum Lum. Just as Anysay switched gears from thriller to comedy, Phanumad goes for impressionistic drama in a story about the reunion of a rock musician (Deuk, the former guitarist of the popular band Cell) with his ex-girlfriend. They had an ugly break-up, as shown in flashback scenes, but are on friendly terms as they stroll the streets of Vientiane by night. It's a glimpse of an increasingly cosmopolitan city and its hip clubs and a reminder that I am long overdue for a visit. Skateboarders and BMX bikers cavort behind the handsome couple – he with his augered earlobes, hipster goatee, skinny jeans and Bob Marley T-shirt, and she with her high-waisted slacks, crop top and glamorous updo.

The proceedings turn dark with The Truth (Kam Tob), a neo-noir thriller that I thought for sure was directed by At the Horizon's Anysay. But, nope, it's written and directed by newcomer Vannaphone Sitthirath. The shadow-filled tale follows a businesswoman who suspects her husband is having an affair, and she sets up a situation so she can confront the girl.

I'm Fine, Thank You

Social networking enters the fray with the intriguing Update Status (Juud Lerm Ton) by Xaisongkham Induangchanthy, in which two boys sitting a coffee shop spot a schoolgirl at a table with a middle-aged American man. They post about the sighting on Facebook, and soon the girl's reputation is in tatters. Meanwhile, the girl has spotted the boys and catches one of them flexing his biceps for his friend, and she posts potentially damaging comments about him. And there's that weird expat guy, who is yammering on and on about the government, channeling Noam Chomsky as he warns of the impending "idiocracy".

Xaisongkham, also a newcomer, is one of two recipients of this year's edition of the Luang Prabang Film Festival's Lao Filmmakers Fund, which dispensed $15,000. He's working on a drama, Those Below, which addresses the deadly legacy of unexploded ordnance left by the American carpet bombing of Laos during the Vietnam-era "Secret War". A crowd-funding campaign was also held to boost the film's budget. The other recipient of the Lao Filmmakers Fund is Vilayphong Phongsavanh, whose at work on a short documentary on the trendy sport of freerunning, which he aims to capture using a flying drone camera.

Finally, there's a fifth segment, Against the Tide (Kuam Sook Kong Por), written by Xaisongkham and directed by Anysay and Phanumad. The story involves an elderly fisherman who is compelled to leave his Mekong River island home and move in with his daughter and son-in-law in the city. It's a segment that doesn't seem to fit with the others, and could be titled "Vientiane, I Hate You", because the old man can't stand living in the city and he feels trapped in his daughter's fancy modern home.

Of the five segments, I liked Anysay's comical Longing for Love the best, followed by The Truth. I had a hard time following I'm Fine, but Lao viewers will probably dig it for its rock-star leading man. And Update Status is as I said, intriguing, for its look at the spread of social media in the Socialist country. Against the Tide feels like another movie entirely, but is anchored by a strong performance by its lead character.

According to Anysay, plans are to release Vientiane in Love in Laos' cinema around Valentine's Day, perhaps with the order of the segments swapped in order to give viewers some more upbeat in the end.

The Truth

LPFF 2014 reviews: The Jungle School, Shift, Madam Phung's Last Journey

The Jungle School

If it's been awhile since you've seen a Riri Riza film, then The Jungle School (Sokola Rimba) is a great way to get reacquainted with one of Indonesia's finest auteurs. Despite the gaps in his IMDb page – the last entry was 2008 – the veteran writer, director and producer is steadily working. His latest effort, making its way around the festival circuit, is based on the true account by teacher and community activist Butet Manurung, a determined woman who brought literacy to the loincloth-clad indigenous people of Indonesia's jungles. She's portrayed by martial artist, actress and model Prisia Nasution, who'll be in the next action film by The Raid director Gareth Evans. She rides a dirtbike into the mountains and with a blackboard strapped to her back, she hikes far into the forest. Pushing herself too hard, she collapses from exhaustion but wakes up in the tribal camp where she was heading. But she is then told she was rescued by a young man from a "downstream" tribe, a group the upstreamers are wary of. Butet wants to find this mysterious downstream tribe, and she does. But she's regarded with suspicion by the tribal elders, especially a mean matriarch who believes that the teacher's pencils and words will curse the tribe. Along with that conflict, Butet also struggles against the bureaucracy of her NGO and a boss who wants her to stage her classes for the media in the easier-to-access upstream village. The coverage means more funding for the NGO, but the money isn't really helping the tribes, which are under increasing pressure from encroachment by loggers, palm-oil plantations and national park expansion. Butet perseveres and forms a  bond with the downstream tribe boy, teaching him to read. It's a skill that comes in handy when the palm-oil guys come with their cases of packaged food to trade for the tribal lands. The looks on their faces when that kid starts reading the contract to them is worth the effort of seeking this film out. A fantastic animation sequence that illustrates the tribe's mystical beliefs adds even more visual loveliness to the picture, which is clearly lensed against a beautiful jungle backdrop that also includes many close-up shots of wildlife. (4/5)

Shift

One of the highlights of the Luang Prabang Film Festival is getting to catch up with the latest of the so-called "maindie" offerings from the Philippines, which churns out dozens of low-budget films that are aimed squarely at mainstream audiences. Shift, an entry from the Cinema One festival, which commissions original digital features for competition and then holds the broadcast rights to them, is an eye-catching romantic comedy about a rebellious young woman with a shock of punk-rock maroon hair. Directed by Siege Ledesma, who makes her feature directorial debut, Shift won the Grand Prix at the Osaka Asian Film Festival. Her main character is portrayed by TV talent show singer Yeng Constantino, who expresses frustration by running her hand through that crazy dyed mane. And she's frustrated a lot. Estela works in the Philippines' extremely competitive call center industry, but she'd rather be playing music or pursuing her hipster hobby of film photography. She's also under pressure at home, where her family's apartment is about to be demolished. Her folks are out of town, but they keep tabs on Estela through her tattletale younger sister. In the midst of company restructuring, Estela is assigned a mentor, a long-haired gay dude named Trevor (Felix Roco). The two quickly form a bond, and tomboyish Estela finds herself falling for the guy. Much confusion ensues over sexuality and gender roles. Fun as it is in the beginning, the energy of Shift slackens in the latter third, causing a few heads to shake in the LPFF screening. Like last year's LPFF entry, What Isn't There, which featured Felix in a cameo as a twin of the mute character portrayed by twin brother Dominic Roco, Shift looks at the trendy youth culture of the Philippines. It's a cycle away from the "poverty porn" of so many Filipino films a few years ago. At some point, I suppose there will be a shift back. (3/5)

Madam Phung's Last Journey

Making her remarkable debut feature, director Nguyen Thi Tham offers a glimpse at Vietnam's transgender culture in Madam Phung's Last Journey, following a travelling carnival troupe run by two ageing drag queens. It's a much different scene than the one I'm used to seeing in Thailand, where there is high tolerance for transgender folk and they are pretty much part of the mainstream even though discrimination does exist. It's much harsher in Vietnam, where queer and transgender culture is frowned upon by authorities. Men who dress as ladies aren't allowed to hold business licenses, and they generally aren't hired for any legitimate jobs. So the travelling carnival troupes are the only way for these marginalized people to make a living. Madam Phung's troupe travels the countryside and highlands, moving from town to town with their ragtag fair. While the veteran drag queens perform songs and sketches, pretty younger ladyboys roam the fairgrounds, flirting with the local men as they sell lottery tickets. There's kiddie rides and games of chance. One game has you guess which numbered slot a guinea pig will run into. Another attraction involves a shotgun being pointed at performers as they do skits on demand. Early in the evening, it's all good clean fun, with families taking in the entertainment. But later in the evening, after the families go home, the level of bawdiness rises and the audience is mostly drunk (and/or high) young men. Then it turns ugly. Fights break out. The police are called. The townspeople turn against the performers who entertained them, and the carnival troupe is forced to hastily pack up and get back on the road. It's a pattern that's repeated at each stop. In between, there are interviews with the colorful Madam Phung and another senior performer, who recall their hard lives as queers in Vietnam. And you get a general feel for what it's like to be in the troupe, who fill the time between performing and travelling with drinking and card games. It's a wild, rough existence. Nguyen began her project in 2009, spending years getting it together. The closeness of her subjects is palpable, and they frequently turn to the camera, feigning shyness in their padded bras and various other states of undress, and affectionately call her "little devil". Appearing at the Luang Prabang Film Festival, the tough and shrewd director was tight-lipped about what her next project might be. Whatever it is, it'll be one to keep a lookout for. (4/5)


See also:

• Finding a cinematic voice [The Nation]

Review: Tukkae Rak Pang Mak (Chiang Khan Story)

• Directed by Yuthlert Sippapak
• Starring Jirayu La-ongmanee, Chonthida Asavahame
• Released in Thai cinemas on August 28, 2014; rated 15+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

Yuthlert Sippapak pays homage to his roots with the partly autobiographical romantic comedy Tukkae Rak Pang Mak (ตุ๊กแกรักแป้งมาก, a.k.a. Chiang Khan Story.

Spanning 20 years from the 1970s to the '90s in the Mekong River town of Chiang Khan in Yuthlert's home province of Loei, it's the story of childhood friends, the poor little orphan boy with the odd name of Tukkae (after the large chirping house lizard that's believed be a bad omen) and the wealthy girl Pang. They later grow apart, but are forced back together by circumstances that only happen in romantic comedies.

The first half of the movie, featuring a cast of child actors, is energetic, sweet and nostalgic, weaving in memories of 4-baht wooden cap guns with the rubber-band action, the then-newfangled foreign treat of jellybeans and GAF Viewmasters.

Tukkae and Pang take to hanging around the town's wooden shophouse cinema. It's during a magical time when such Thai cinema classics as Sombat Metanee's gritty actioner Chumpae is playing alongside Payut Ngaokrachang's animated triumph The Adventures of Sudsakorn and Sompote Sands' insane Hanuman vs. 7 Ultraman.

The kids are mentored by the theater's poster painter, played by Yuthlert's longtime collaborator "Uncle" Adirek Watleela. His character Pong Poster is a heartfelt tribute to still-living 1970s' director Piak Poster, who started out as a poster artist, as well as Uncle's late Buppa Rahtree co-star, character actor and production designer Bunthin Thuaykaew.

Tukkae, always on the defensive because of his funny nickname and his status as a poor orphan kid, seeks to play with the gang of chubby boys who always bully him. In lively action scenes, they blast away with their cap guns while wearing Red Eagle masks, like Mitr Chaibancha. And Tukkae accepts a dare that drives Pang out of his life, seemingly forever.

Flash forward a few years to Bangkok, Tukkae is a comic-book artist with aspirations of getting in the movie business. He's partnered up with a level-headed and experienced film hand, amiably played by Slice director Kongkiat Khomsiri, one of several film industry hands in the cast. In another scene, Thanit Jitnukul (Bang Rajan) turns up as a producer. He can't believe Tukkae doesn't know what a "treatment" is.

The guys are tasked with making a Mae Nak "liverscape" movie by a hilariously marble-mouthed B-movie producer who sees nothing wrong with moving the famous ghost story from Phra Khanong to Chiang Khan. Tukkae has other ideas, and he writes an "untitled" screenplay that is basically his life story, with a focus on his relationship with Pang.

The implausibilities stack up as Tukkae encounters Pang by chance in a Bangkok disco, and she doesn't remember him at all. In fact, nobody from Tukkae's old school remembers what anybody looks like. But this is, refreshingly, before Facebook and selfies, so I suppose the disbelief can be suspended somewhat. Mistaken identities and misunderstandings add to Tukkae's woes as Pang wakes up in Tukkae's bedroom and doesn't recognize Tukkae or any of his stuff (not even the Viewmaster she gave him).

But the two are thrown together anyway when Pang, now a famous actress, is cast for the role in Tukkae's movie. Awkwardness ensues on the set as Pang is confronted with the guy she only recognizes from that bad night out. She doesn't realize it's her old childhood friend, nor does she seem aware that he actually wrote the screenplay for the movie she's in.

The energy and sweetness of the movie's first half gives way to a wallowing slackness that's struggling to find an ending. It's not helped by the rather wooden performances by Kao Jirayu and Pleng Chontida. Kao, a former child actor with many credits, has better chemistry in later scenes with his character's dementia-addled grandmother who raised him. Pleng, the celebrity offspring of singer Nantida Kaewbuasai and scandal-plagued politician Chonsawat Asavahame, is making her screen debut, but seems to let a curly hairstyle and aviator sunglasses do all the work for her.

The supporting cast, especially the Tukky-type actress who plays Pang's best friend and manager, help to liven things up. She is friends with soldiers at the local army base, and they turn up on command to dish out beatings to anyone getting on her wrong side. Boriboon Chanruang portrays a director who spent so long in New York he's forgotten to speak Thai. He becomes Tukkae's chief rival in romancing Pang.

Yuthlert seems to have suppressed his infamous genre-jumping tendencies in an effort to make what he's called his first romantic comedy, though melodrama, horror and slapstick all creep their way in, just not as much or as often as his past films.

Tukkae Rak Pang Mak also marks a comeback of sorts for Yuthlert, who has done more than a dozen films over around half as many years up until a year or so ago. However, his last effort, the potentially controversial Deep South drama Fatherland (ปิตุภูมิ พรมแดนแห่งรัก, Pitupoom) was yanked from release by the film's producer. So Yuthlert retreated to Loei to regroup.

His new film is the first release from a new studio, Transformation Films, which is a joint venture of M Pictures, Bangkok Film Studio (formerly Film Bangkok), True I-Content and Matching Studio.

Box-office performance for Tukkae has been middling, with 12.7 million baht in earnings at last count, but hopefully the company will soldier on and perhaps give one of Thai cinema's most distinctive voices yet another chance to tell his stories.

See also:

• True Group in filmmaking JV to cash in on local, foreign demand [The Nation]
• Transformation Films YouTube channel

Review: Timeline Jodmai Khwam Songjam

• Directed by Nonzee Nimibutr
• Starring Jirayu Tangsrisuk, Jarinporn Joonkiat, Piyathida Worramusik, Noppachai Chaiyanam
• Released in Thai cinemas on February 14, 2014; rated 15+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

Someone dies in Timeline Jodmai Khwam Songjam (Timeline จดหมาย-ความทรงจำ). But that's not a spoiler, because a death sets up the story of this tragic romance and family drama by Nonzee Nimibutr.

Try as hard as he might, Nonzee failed to bring me to tears with this sad story of missed connections, misplaced desires and general hard-headedness. Which is saying something, because, for example, if I just think about the ending of John Ford's The Searchers, I'll bawl like a big baby. So it's not like I have a heart of stone.

Everyone is crying in Timeline, which is beautifully filmed against a breathtakingly idyllic rural backdrop, features strong performances by a talented cast and has many cute nods to contemporary Thai society, with plenty of Facebooking, smartphones, vintage bicycles and animated drawings. Oh, and there's a puppy! But the movie is emotionally bereft.

The set-up involves Piyathida Worramusik as an achingly young mother who was widowed early in her marriage while she was pregnant. Living on small farm in the hills of Chiang Mai, she tends to her late husband's dream of growing strawberries and holds tight to her memories of him, reading letters that he wrote her. When her young son Tan grows old enough, she has him read dad's old letters to her.

It's a routine Tan ("James" Jirayu Tangsrisuk) has grown weary of, and as he's reading the letters, which he's memorized, he's actually looking at his phone. Tan wants off the farm, and wants to go to university in Bangkok and become a cartoonist. His mother wants him to attend agricultural college and stay close to home.

Eventually, the stubborn mom relents, and Tan is on the bus to Bangkok. As the country boy tries to get his around the fact that he's in the big city, he also experiences his first taste of alcohol, courtesy of a pair of comic-relief roommates. Late to wake up the next morning, he rushes off to school and is tardy to the freshman orientation – a hazing ritual. Also arriving late is June (Jarinporn Joonkiat), a plucky Bangkok girl with a big goofy smile. She and Tan are singled out for special attention and made to look like dogs.

They are a cute couple and form an easy bond as they bicycle their way around the city, share many classes and take a day trip that turns into an innocent overnighter on the beach on Si Chang island.

But Tan isn't picking up on June's signals. He chases after Orn, the more-conventionally attractive filmmaking cousin of June. Orn, who's way out of Tan's league, treats the farmboy like a doormat. But Tan is so besotted he doesn't care, and June slips away to pursue her own dreams in Japan.

Meanwhile back at home, Tan's mother Mat struggles to keep the berry farm a going concern. Wat (Noppachai Chaiyanam), a produce buyer and longtime family friend, wants to help. But heartbreakingly headstrong Mat, who holds tight to her dead husband's spirit, refuses the handsome man's advances.

There are parallels made. June teaches herself to make Tan's favorite stir-fried vegetable dish while Mat learns to make strawberry jam. And June and Mat actually meet and bond during a weekend of filmmaking by Tan and that other girl. Chemistrywise, it'd be nice to see more of Piyathida (Laddaland) and young Jarinporn (Dear Galileo, Countdown) together.

Young soap hunk James Ji is an appealing face fresh but his character is so frustrating I wished I could've reached up into the screen and slapped some sense into him. Piyathida's obstinate character is pretty painful to watch at times as well, but you get the feeling that maybe she might've eventually lightened up and accepted a bit of joy into her sorrow-filled life.

Timeline began as a loose sequel to The Letter, a hit 2004 drama that Nonzee produced and famously had audiences crying so much the cinemas had to hand out tissues with the tickets. It was a remake of a South Korean drama. Nonzee now insists that Timeline has nothing at all to do with The Letter, even though letters are a big part of the movie. Timeline also owes a debt to Bhandit Rittakol's Boonchoo series of comedies, about a country boy who goes to college in the big city and trafficked in the same type of idealized nostalgia that Timeline evokes.

Whether Thai audiences are going for it is debatable. Timeline opened at a distant No. 2 and at the most recent count was in third place – good enough to stay ahead of The Monuments Men and Saving Mr. Banks but not enough to draw eyes away from the likes of the RoboCop remake or the lava-laden 3D spectacle of Pompeii.

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• Everybody cry now – Nonzee turns on tearducts for Timeline

Review: Tai Hong Tai Hian

• Directed by Thammanoon Sakulbunthanom, Achira Nokthet, Poj Arnon, Thanadol Nualsuth
• Starring Pimchanok Luewisetphaibun, Chotwutthi Bunyasit, Natpassara Adulyamethasiri, Pharunyoo Rotchanawutthitham, Charm Osathanond, Charlie Trairat, Jazz Chuenchuen, Tanwarin Sukkhapisit, Oranut Unsawat, Phongsakon Chaisuriya, Nick Kunatip Pinpradab, Pichaya Nitipaisankul, Manatnan Phanloetwongsakun
• Released in Thai cinemas on February 6, 2014; rated 18+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 3/5

Poj Arnon has rounded up another batch of directors for yet another horror omnibus, Tai Hong Tai Hian (ตายโหงตายเฮี้ยน), four sleazy ghost stories inspired by pulpy true-crime cases. It's a follow-up to a similar 2010 project by Poj, Tai Hong, a.k.a. Die a Violent Death.

The yarns involve one of Thailand's notoriously dangerous public-transport minivans plunging from an elevated expressway, murdered women in the sewer of a brothel, a body stuffed into a hotel room's air-conditioning vent and a young man who leaves the monkhood to seek revenge.

The results are mixed, but the biggest problem has to do with slow pacing. With four stories crammed into just under two hours, they should move a bit faster, but it takes them forever to get going.

Each segment is themed according to numbers, 14, 16, 15 and 13, which are referenced by such things as a button worn by a brothel worker, the room number in a run-down hotel or a record spinning a lullaby to lovers.

Seemingly long silences underline the sluggish pace of the first entry Tok Tangduan, about the falling minivan. The segment, directed by Thammanoon Sakulbunthanom (The Intruder), also suffers from an over-reliance on phones to tell the story, but that's probably intentional because a smartphone plays a vital role in the van plunge. A young woman is leaving the office late. A guy has been calling and texting her, while he's driving his fast red car. But then he's not there, forcing the girl to take the "last van of the evening". The phone messages persist and the surroundings in the van become increasingly spooky until it finally becomes clear that karma has caught up with the young lady, portrayed by Pimchanok "Bai Fern" Luewisetphaibun, and she is on her last ride.

The strongest segment, Tha Lor Soi 9, about the brothel, provides a bit of comic relief. Fan Chan kid star Charlie Trairat is one of a trio of guys who head to the place. His buddy wants to select girl No. 16 for the night, but they run into trouble, mainly from the house's strong-armed transgender madame, hilariously portrayed by transgender actor-director Tanwarin Sukkhapisit. Charlie and another of his pals then end up handcuffed to another customer, played by young comic actor Jazz Chuenchuen. They end up in a sewer that's filled with bodies, and the guy they are handcuffed to is actually a ghost. Decent makeup effects are another highlight of this segment, which is directed by Achira Nokthet, the production designer on Tanwarin's It Gets Better.

Poj himself chips in with the third entry, Pee Nai Chong Ae. It has a tattooed guitar-toting rock 'n' roller (Pharunyoo Rotchanawutthitham) checking into a fleabag hotel, but there's something wrong with the air-con. Beauty-pageant queen Charm Osathanond provides eye candy before she becomes part of the ductwork.

The finale by Thanadol Nualsuth (The Intruder) is an exasperatingly confusing revenge tale. With a chronology that was put in a blender and never put back together, Gam ("bad karma") is very difficult to follow. From what I could piece together, "Golf" Pichaya Nitipaisankul had a falling out with his psycho girlfriend, played by Manatnan "Donut" Phanloetwongsakun, and then entered the monkhood. But she kept hounding him, so he left the monkhood, tracked her down and killed her. Or maybe he killed her and then became a monk? The suspense comes from the spot of bother he runs into while trying to dispose of the body. There's a cameo by a famous leading man who was likely just hanging around the set. He all-too-briefly adds dramatic heft to the segment, and very nearly saves it.



Related posts:

• Review: Tai Hong (Die a Violent Death)