Thai gay films 2007

Acting Serious, Living Rationally, Thinking Gay

Currently appearing in As You Like It at the White Bear Theatre, London

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Bangkok Love Story Club M2 Love of Siam Me ... Myself

Me ... Myself (Ko hai rak jong jaroen)
(April 2007)

I don't see it myself, but Thai women and gay men swoon over Ananda Everingham, the British-Lao-Thai filmstar. He's pleasant enough looking and I wouldn't kick him out of the bedroom or kitchen, but I'm not going to head for the cinema just because he's in a film (unlike, say, Johnny Depp, who can have my babies any time).

So I didn't rush to see Me ... Myself (Thai title: Let Love Live) and I only sat through it because my company was a sponsor of Alternative Lifestyles Day at the 2007 Phuket Film Festival. At first I was bored, then gradually I was drawn in. By the end of the film teardrops were lingering in my eyes.

The film poster. Note Ananda's purple shoes.

Basic plot: Man gets robbed and loses his memory. Single mother Oom finds herself looking after him and nicknames him Tan. They fall in love. He has disturbing dreams of another woman. Then thanks to a police investigation, he realises that pre-robbery he is the Other Woman, in his previous life as a leading light in a Phuket ladyboy show. So what happens now? Does he return to his old life or stay with his new love?

Now, let's get this straight, if you'll pardon the expression. Ananda may look effete in Western eyes, but he's all man. Some katoey* are pretty hefty but the muscles Ananda displays in the dancing scene show no sign whatsoever of hormones or any other feminisation treatment. So the idea that he has spent his whole life as a katoey requires significant suspension of belief. (And while I'm on the subject of sexual roles and appearance, I'm not impressed by the fact that all his Phuket sisters act like stereotypical drag queens.)

But, my Thai friends would say, you're missing the point. Ignore the details. Look at the love. Look at the doubt in Oom's eyes, look at the loss in Tan's, see the fragile relationship develop between Tan and little Ohm. It wasn't just the Thais who saw the film from that point of view. For the foreigners I spoke to later, it was those emotional issues, not Ananda's biceps, that held their attention.

So while my left brain was complaining that the film was not politically correct and my right brain said bugger political correctness, it's a psychological mess, my heart was telling them both to shut up. It's a film about love, said the seat of my emotions, and who cares what gender people are. And that was the point at which the shadow of a tear came in.
* Transgender / ladyboy - for more background, click here.
marks out of 10: social interest: 5 katoey interest: 4 film quality: 6
IMDb entry film website wikipedia
Index of Thai gay and katoey films

Club M2
(July 2007)

I have a confession to make. I committed a crime when I went to see this film. It was in House, the art cinema on RCA in Bangkok. I walked in to find myself the only person in the screening room. The lights went down, the Royal Anthem was played and, unlike every other time I have gone to the cinema in Thailand, I remained seated.

I meant no disrespect to the King, and had there been anyone else in the cinema I would have leapt to my feet immediately. It just seemed to me embarrassing to stand there alone. If I have offended anyone, I apologise.

I tell this story simply to draw attention to the fact that I know of no-one else, Thai or foreign, who has seen Club M2 or even heard of it. And that's a pity. Not because it's a great film - it isn't. But it succeeds at what it sets out to do - be a light-hearted comedy with a bit of romance thrown in, set in a world (a sauna) where gay men are the norm. The outsiders who have to fit in, and do so with varying degrees of success, are heterosexual men - in this case a group of criminals hiding out in the baths and a homophobic boy band.

There were no great beauties in this film - just the average young gay Thai - but that was part of its charm.

An independent production, Club M2 came to life courtesy of the producers of the 2006 film Right By Me. Their earlier film appeared to have been written by and for 16- year-olds. This, their second effort, assumes their target audience is around 20 and does not offer step-by-step lessons in what it means to be gay. The explicit message this time is the facts of HIV transmission and how to use a condom - highly necessary information in a commmunity where infection rates have hit 30% of sexually active gay men.

Mostly filmed in the Arabian-harem style Chakran sauna in the Ari district of Bangkok, there is plenty of eye-candy and not a few moments of soft erotica. On the negative side, the budget was minimal, the acting only adequate and there are several holes in the storyline.

marks out of 10: social interest: 5 gay interest: 8 film quality: 5
no IMDb entry film website no wikipedia entry
Index of Thai gay and katoey films

Bangkok Love Story
(Peuan, Gu Rak Meung Wa)
(September 2007)

Publicity for Bangkok Love Story, whose Thai translation is something like Friend, I Fucking Love You, made it very clear that this was a film about two hunky men getting it on. Not only are they bare-chested, with hunky Chaiwat Thongsang (It*) nestled into Ratanabanrang Towasat (Mek) but Ratanabanrang's hand is very clearly under the waistband of Chaiwat's jeans.

The basic story is simple. Hitman Mek is hired to kill It but is unconvinced of the need to do so. After a shoot-out with his employer's men, the wounded Mek and It hide out in a rooftop shack. Cue tender bathing. Cue sexual intercourse. Cue wondering-about-one's-sexual-identity.

Rounding out that basic plot, we get It's relationship with his girlfriend and Mek's poverty-struck background

The film poster had two minor discrepancies. Mek is the hitman but It is holding the gun. And while the walls suggest the couple's rooftop hideaway, that small room was cluttered and had no such sofa.

with his ailing mother and brother. And don't forget that Mek's employer is not satisfied with the situation. In the two hours or so that the film runs, we get melodrama aplenty, including AIDS, incest, poverty, prostitution, suicide and more violence.

I'm no fan of melodrama, and I curl up my eyes and toes when Thai actresses overact in full soap opera mode (Thai actors are relatively restrained but their range is often limited). The plot had more holes than a sieve and the male love-making scene was so calculatedly designed to titillate that I couldn't wait for it to be over - an emotion that returned to me several times as the film progressed.

But while half of me was cursing director and writer Poj Arnon, the other half was lapping up Tiwa Moeithaisong's luscious cinematography, which gave life to the grungy dark city that is Bangkok during the rainy season. The man deserves the Thai equivalent of an Oscar.

My gay Thai friends all avoided this film. Sure, Chaiwat and Ratanabanrang are sexy, but they weren't enough to lure an audience unimpressed by director Poj Arnon's track record of mass-market comedies, including several with stereotyped katoey. Foreigners were more receptive and the film won the Grand Award of the 34th Brussels International Independent Film Festival. It is also scheduled for international release in 2008.
* Some Thai names do not come over well in English - but the originals are better than the subtitles, which translate It as Stone and Mek as Cloud...
marks out of 10: social interest: 5 gay interest: 7 film quality: 4
IMDb film website wikipedia (contains spoilers)
Index of Thai gay and katoey films

Love of Siam (Rak Haeng Siam)
(November 2007)

Towards the end of 2007 the publicity for The Love of Siam blanketed the country. What does love mean for four attractive seventeen-year-olds, two girls and two boys who hang out in the youth-trendy heart of Bangkok known as Siam? This promised to be Thailand's answer to Hollywood rom-coms, a film that young couples could see together, snuggling up against each other as they wondered which of the screen pairings would survive.

The PR worked well. Thais flooded into the cinemas and were drawn into a drama which involved not only the teenagers but their friends and family. Only as the film progressed did they understand that the heart of the story lay not in Tong's love for his girlfriend Donut*, or Ying's hopeless love for the musician Mew, but Mew's overwhelming love for Tong and Tong's uncertainty whether Donut or Mew came higher in his affections.

Surrounding these foursome were other issues. The disappearance of Tong's sister, his father's alcoholism and his mother's determination to hold the remnants of her family together. Mew's relationship with the other members of his band as his mood threatens the valuable contract they are being offered. (The fictional group exists in real life as the August Band; their music provides the title and other songs. The CD is a best-seller and Witwisit Hirunwongkul, the vocalist who plays Mew, is at least as talented a singer as he is an actor.)

The film poster. Note that the characters appear much younger here than they do in the film. Mew is top left and Tong bottom right.

The CD cover, with the actors in the same position

I saw the film three weeks after it came out. By then, I thought everyone in the country was aware of the gay angle, but when Mew and Tong kissed, there were audible gasps from several people around me. I began to suspect that there was an unspoken conspiracy by those who had seen the film not to reveal too much to others.

Besides, in Thai eyes, The Love of Siam was not a gay film. As far as I remember, the word gay itself is not uttered. This just happens to be a film about a young man deeply in love with another young man, and about the second young man who is uncertain where his own true feelings lie.

More than that, my friends told me and Bangkok newspaper columnists wrote, The Love of Siam is about family. And although the subplot that followed the disappearance of Tong's sister seemed to me absurd, my Thai friends responded differently. The absurdity was irrelevant; the real issue was the pain of losing a daughter and the need to grasp at any straw that might reduce the intensity of that pain.

By the end, however, Tong's parents and their problems fade into the background, as do Donut and Ying. The Love of Siam is about young men in love and confusion, and it captures these two emotions perfectly.
* Once again, an unfortunate Thai name from an English-speaker's point of view - Aticha Pongsilpipat, who plays Donut, is tall and slender.

marks out of 10: social interest: 7 gay interest: 9 film quality: 7
IMDb film website wikipedia (contains spoilers)
Index of Thai gay and katoey films

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