Southeast Asian Cinema Month Quick Picks and Pans

The Traveling Circus (1988) In this underseen drama from director Linh Viet, a rag-tag traveling circus visits an impoverished rural Vietnamese village, despite the protests of the village elder. Skeptical of the unwanted outsiders, the starving residents have little need for frivolity or entertainment when they’re trying to survive. A young boy becomes smitten by one of the performers, a woman who performs a magic trick that makes rice appear. He longs to know the secret so he can feed his malnourished younger sister and the rest of the village. Filmed in black and white (which lends to the sense of immediacy), The Traveling Circus is a simply told but devastating tale of desperation and misplaced belief. Largely unknown outside its native country, this film deserves to reach a wider audience 

Rating: ****½. Available on DVD

ROH (aka: Soul) (2019) Director/co-writer Emir Ezwan’s atmospheric debut feature, set in a Malaysian jungle, creeps under your skin from the first reel and never unleashes its grasp. A single mother (Farah Ahmad) and her two children Along and Angah (Mhia Farhana and Harith Haziq) eke out a meager existence in their isolated hut. Their lives are changed forever when they encounter a young girl wandering the jungle alone. Her presence and subsequent death become a harbinger of terrible things to come for the family. A mysterious old woman (June Lojong) who lives nearby offers her assistance against the evil presence that looms about. Signs point to an enigmatic lone hunter (Pemburu), searching for the missing girl. ROH doesn’t rely on cheap scares or flashy special effects, but relies on light, shadow, and the ambient sounds of the jungle (accompanied by a minimalist score) to create a relentless and overwhelming sense of dread. Bad omens abound, and nothing is quite what it seems. 

Rating: ****. Available on DVD, Tubi and Shudder 

Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts (2017) Set in a remote rural Indonesian town, director/co-writer Mouly Surya’s spaghetti western-inspired story (accompanied by a Ennio-Morricone-influenced score) of revenge is a portrait of quiet courage under extreme adversity. A man appears at the widow Marlina’s (Marsha Timothy) modest farmhouse, calmly proclaiming that he and his men (who are about to arrive) will take her livestock and forcibly have sex with her. This doesn’t sit well with our plucky protagonist, who poisons his men and decapitates their leader. She sets off (carrying the severed head) with an abused pregnant friend to report the incident to the police, who appear less than sympathetic. Mouly Surya’s film provides a matter-of-fact commentary on misogynistic society, where the consequences for the victims are worse than the perpetrators. At its heart is Marsha Timothy’s intense performance as a woman who refuses to passively adhere to social conventions at her expense. 

Rating: ****. Available on DVD 

 

Ode to Nothing (2018) Middle-aged Sonya (Pokwang) leads a dreary day-to-day existence, tending to her failing small-town family business, a funeral home. With too-few customers to keep afloat and a cruel landlord constantly breathing down her neck, she and her estranged father face eviction. Her life unexpectedly changes when an anonymous old lady’s corpse is dropped off by two men. While waiting for someone to claim the body, the corpse becomes Sonya’s surrogate mother and confidant – a temporary salve for her pervasive loneliness. Ode to Nothing is a heartbreaking meditation on quiet despair and invisibility in an uncaring society.    

Rating: ****. Available on Blu-ray

Alone (2007) Co-directors Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom return with the follow-up to their debut film, Shutter (2004), a twisted tale of retribution from beyond the grave. When Pim (Marsha Wattanapanich) learns that her mother has suffered a devastating stroke, she reluctantly returns to Thailand with her boyfriend to settle affairs. As she stays in her childhood home, the past comes back to haunt her in the ghostly form of her once-conjoined twin sister Ploy (who died when they were separated). This unsettling story of survivor’s guilt and unrequited love will keep you in suspense throughout. 

Rating: ***½. Available on DVD (region 3)

 

Silip: Daughters of Eve (1985) Set in a small, isolated seaside village in the Philippines, director Edward Perez paints a picture of desire, longing and cruelty. When free-spirited Selda (Sarsi Emmanuelle) returns home, it sends the insular community into a tailspin, especially her sexually repressed sister Tonya (Maria Isabel Lopez). A fractured, contentious love triangle brews between Selda, Tonya and Simon (Mark Joseph) a brash hunter, leading to a tragic climax. This example of Filipino “Bold” cinema (roughly analogous to Japanese “Pinky” film) can be difficult to watch at times, with its brutality and frankness, but its exploration of the dark side of human nature will stick with you. 

Warning: The opening scene, featuring the (real) slaughter of a cow is quite disturbing, as well as later scenes of (simulated) sexual assault. 

Rating: ***½. Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Motel Mist (2016) Writer/director Prabda Yoon focuses on the bizarre activities surrounding a Bangkok love motel, where anonymous people go to fulfill their wildest desires or simply drop out of society. The patrons include a middle-aged man with an abusive streak and a former child actor who believes he’s being controlled by aliens. Meanwhile, a love-starved motel clerk lives vicariously by spying on the activities of the guests. This quirky, well-acted character study is full of surprises throughout, leading to a fittingly unusual ending.   

Rating: 3 ½ stars. Available on DVD, Midnight Pulp and Tubi

Short Take: Tears of the Black Tiger

 

(2000) Written and directed by Wisit Sasanatieng; Starring: Chartchai Ngamsan, Stella Malucchi, Supakorn Kitsuwon, Suwinit Panjamawat, Arawat Ruangvuth and Sombat Metanee; Available on DVD

Rating: ****

The following review is part of the Foreign Western Blogathon, hosted by Debbie V. from Moon in Gemini, looking at a traditionally American genre through a different lens.

 

“The movie harks back to traditional knowledge, like old herbs we used to boil and drink, which now come in capsules. Like our film, we mixed it with modern film language for a current audience. If it was just an old movie, nobody would be interested. We just borrowed its form, techniques, and combined it with contemporary film language.” – Wisit Sasanatieng 

Over the years, many talented foreign filmmakers have tinkered with a genre that was once regarded as the exclusive domain of Hollywood, to create something simultaneously familiar and completely new. A successful reinterpretation of the Western requires more than simply changing the location or shuffling the actors, but changing the cultural perspective, by utilizing familiar conventions as a launching point rather than a destination. One such example is the Thai Western mash-up, Tears of the Black Tiger, a melodrama about star-crossed lovers that infuses the familiar tropes of American Westerns with Thai sensibilities. Setting his film in post-WW II Thailand, writer/director Wisit Sasanatieng blends old-fashioned and contemporary elements, resulting in something uniquely classic and post-modern.

Dum, aka “Black Tiger” (Chartchai Ngamsan), the film’s antihero protagonist, lives outside the law yet adheres to a strict internal moral code. He works as an enforcer for the ruthless crime boss, Fai (Sombat Metanee), becoming his right-hand man (much to the irritation of fellow outlaw Mahesuan, played by Supakorn Kitsuwon, who formerly occupied that vaunted position). In a flashback, we witness how he meets the love of his life, Rumpoey, the high-born daughter of a local governor. The young girl goads peasant boy Dum into taking her out on a boat, where they discover a sala (a sort of Thai gazebo) floating amidst the lily pads. At that moment, they vow to make this their meeting place. Events take a near-tragic turn when they encounter a trio of bullies, and she nearly drowns in the ensuing scuffle. When he eventually returns home with her near-lifeless body, he’s severely punished by his father (who works for her father). Flash forward 10 years, and the adult Rumpoey (played by Italian-Colombian actress Stella Malucchi) is betrothed to Police Captain Kumjorn (Arawat Ruangvuth). Instead of sharing his joy, she only feels empty, as her heart belongs to Dum.

Contrasting the rather conventional story of lovers separated by rigid class roles, is a delightfully unconventional pastiche of styles. Sasanatieng draws as much upon glossy Technicolor Hollywood cowboy dramas as gritty “spaghetti” Westerns to play in his cinematic sandbox. One scene illustrates via instant replay how Dum is the quickest gun in Thailand. He’s so skillful that he intentionally aims his pistol, so the bullet ricochets off the interior of a cabin to hit his mark. In another scene, he squares off against a rival gunfighter, accompanied by a surreal painted background.  

Tears of the Black Tiger owes much of its distinctive look to post-production visual trickery. The footage was initially shot on 35 mm black-and-white film, transferred to tape for digital editing (including the addition of color), and finally transferred back to film. Many of the colorful scenes feature vivid pinks, reds and greens, while in one sequence, set at a train station, the hues are purposely muted, with digital scratches applied to mimic archival footage. In another scene, when Rumpoey and Dum are seated in the back seat of her chauffeur-driven car, the foreground remains in color, while the projected background through the car windows is in black and white.

Sasanatieng frequently plays with the artifice of motion pictures, favoring striking visual compositions and willfully anachronistic depictions over any pretense of realism. While the bandits ride horses and dress in traditional (albeit stylized) cowboy garb, the film remains firmly rooted in the mid-20^th century, as they fight the police with machine guns, bazookas and hand grenades. The soundtrack is also a mix of old and new, filled with musical interludes (consisting of vintage Thai pop songs alongside new interpretations by contemporary artists). Tears of the Black Tiger at once celebrates the joy of filmmaking while a streak of a melancholic fatalism runs throughout. According to Sasanatieng, “Thais believe that destiny leads us down the right path,” which ultimately informs the inevitable path the plot must follow. It’s a self-aware exercise in style steeped in Eastern and Western tradition, making this an unforgettable experience.