Mae Bia

This is a beautifully shot erotica from Thailand that doesn't compromise nudity and sex. The casting is on the point Karnpitchar Ketmanee does a great performance as the seductive beauty with lots of admirers and lovers. Shahkrit Yamnarm does a great job as a family man who falls for Mekhala. Movie does a good job of mixing modern life with traditional side of Thailand. but of course director M.L. Pundhevanop Dhewakul's strength is visible on the rural, traditional parts.

Having left Thailand as a young boy, an extremely successful businessman by the name of "Chanachol" (Shahkrit Yamnarm) finally returns with his wife "Kaew" (Phattaranan Ruamchi) and young daughter with the idea of finally settling down. It's during this time that Chanachol begins finding the life in Bangkok a bit too stressful and so he asks his nephew "Pakphoon" (Jiravich Pongpaijit) to start looking for a traditional Thai house in a rural part of the country. Since Pakphoon is already doing something similar to that for a business client he introduces Chanachol to a beautiful tour guide named "Mekhala" (Karnpitchar Ketmanee) who might know of some places available near her home on the Ta Chin River. However, once he visits this area he gets the strange feeling like he's been there before and to make matters worse he also becomes strangely infatuated with Mekhala in the process. What he doesn't know is that Mekhala is harboring an extremely deadly secret and the more he gets involved with her the more dangerous it becomes for him. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was essentially a remake of the 2001 film of the same name but more commonly known as "The Snake Lady." The main difference between the two is that, while there were certainly some scenes of a sexual nature in the original picture, this particular film had quite a bit more and many of them were used to replace some of the rather slow scenes in the original movie. That being said, even though some of these gratuitous scenes had no real impact on the overall plot they turned out to be an improvement of sorts. The main characters also had a bit more depth as well. On the other hand, although the aforementioned Karnpitchar Ketmanee was certainly quite attractive, I have to say that her counterpart in the original film (Napakpapha Nakprasitte) was absolutely gorgeous and for that reason a bit more compelling. Be that as it may, there really wasn't that much to differentiate these two movies and because of that I have rated it at the same level. Average.

Why did they put a stain on cinema of Thailand by doing this? Granted, there are some good visuals and all the performers are good looking. It's a pity that the director WASTED their talents by turning this into a sex galore without any substance.