FAUTEUILS D’ORCHESTRE: Amélie-like eyes radiating love. |
Wisit Sasanatieng’s Tears of the Black Tiger, which opens this Friday at the Kendall Square, was shot in some outmoded B-movie color process, and it’s a retro spoof, a Thai melodrama/action picture/Western that, the filmmaker has explained to befuddled non-Asian reviewers, is an affectionate homage to cheapo Thai Westerns of the 1950s, trashy Thai action films of the 1960s, weepie melodramas of all eras. It’s fine that we’re ignorant of Sasanatieng’s filmic inspirations and sources. Tears of the Black Tiger is more enjoyable for its daffy oddness, with enough sniffles and heartbreak and tongue-in-cheek parody and bullets and zany battle scenes for movie fans of all lands, a washing-machine load of tumbling genres.
The story is simple, a faux folk tale: a peasant lad is smitten with a rich girl from Bangkok and she with him, and they pledge eternal love. But the lad, Dum (Chartchai Ngamsan), is born under a ridiculously bad sign. He’s unjustly kicked out of the university, his dad is slain by brigands, and they in turn are mowed down by bandits on horseback. So Dum joins up with those who avenged his dad, becoming the baddest gunslinger of them all, duded up in all-black, known far and wide by his cowpoke nom de guerre, the Black Tiger. Meanwhile, Rumpoey (Stella Malucchi) pines for him, as he seems to have deserted her. Alas, alack, her dad forces on her an engagement to a righteous policeman, Captain Kumjorn (Arawat Ruangvuth), who, ignorant of his fiancée’s secret love, chases the Black Tiger.
Were music rights paid? Every once in a while, the film soundtrack samples Ennio Morricone’s theme for Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo|The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Yet Dum couldn’t be farther from Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name. The actor, Ngamsan, is a softie, with a sensual, effete mouth. He’s such an unlikely macho hero, and maybe that’s the idea. My brief time in Bangkok led me to believe that Thai people have a much different idea of masculinity. There were openly gay people everywhere, and Tears of the Black Tiger could be seen as a campy, gay-sensibility Western, with its candy-colored cinematography, its suffering-woman subplot, and its epicene cowboys.
Sasanatieng’s film triumphed at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. It had the misfortune to be bought by Miramax, which did what it did with many purchases when Harvey Weinstein was at the helm: refrigerated it in the company vaults. Magnolia Pictures bought it a second time and, six years later, facilitated a theatrical release.
In France, it’s not only action blockbusters that are review-proof. For three decades, mainstream crowds have swarmed to light-as-a swallow’s-egg “boulevard” comedies: smug, farcical confections starring Gallic B-list actors. Critics have moaned in distress. Here’s another one: Danièle Thompson’s Fauteuils d’orchestre|Avenue Montaigne (also this Friday at the Kendall Square), a slick but mushy bit of backstage claptrap that France chose as its Oscar entry for Best Foreign Film. Jessica (Cécile de France), a country girl who dotes on her sweet grand-mère, gets a job as a waitress next to a posh theater. Soon, her Amélie-like eyes radiating love, she improves the lives of the grumpy, sophisticated people around her. A fairy-tale reward: she hooks up with a Sorbonne professor.
