Long Gun Posted November 21, 2001 Report Share Posted November 21, 2001 I love film festivals. I will happily hop from one screen to another to watch 2 or 3 movies in a row, grabbing a quick coffee or snack in between. At B100 per movie it’s not much of a risk to buy tickets based on brief synopses – you can always walk out if the movie is crap and go and eat or shop until the next one is on. Or just catch up on some sleep! Actually getting tickets in advance was a bit difficult this year and I could only buy tickets for 2 of the 10 movies I had picked out, based on general appeal and back-to-back timing. Managed to get tickets for some others when I turned up for the first movie last night, though other events, like Ploenchit Fair, and commitments have meant further trimming of the list. Unfortunately the choice of seats from most movies is now a bit limited which is why I ended up in the 2nd row, leaning back as far as I could to fit as much of the big screen as possible into my field of vision, with some strange consequences. The movie was a Dutch film called ‘The Cave’ or ‘De Grot’ (I think), mainly English language with some subtitled Dutch and even a little Thai! It is set in Holland, Belgium and a thinly disguised Thailand at various stages of the relationship between the 3 main characters, from their first meeting at 14 through to their 40s. Although there are some very funny scenes, particularly related to teenage shagging, much of the mood is fairly grim as their lives generally don’t run too smoothly as they get older. After a year of Thai-censored movies and TV it is quite a shock to the system to suddenly see the screen filled with naked flesh but the biggest shock for me was how BIG those farang women are – or is it just the Dutch?!? OK, my viewing angle may have distorted things a bit but those hips!! Those thighs!!! Absolutely terrifying, especially from the perspective of my likely return to the UK …. I have only ever shagged one Dutch girl in my life and she was absolutely gorgeous, one of the few who I thought that of at the time who still makes me gasp when I look at old photographs, and also the first to introduce me to the delights of live lesbian shows. One of the great love affairs of my life, as well as one of the shortest-lived! Anyway, good story, mainly told in flashbacks to various stages of their relationships. After the movie the director and what I think was some of the cast (though without lying in between their legs and looking up at them through a magnifying glass, it was difficult to tell) were on hand to discuss the movie but I needed an inter-movie refuel and Burger King was only an escalator away …… Next up was an American movie I had never heard of, “Dancing At The Blue Iguana”, chosen largely as it seemed to have fairly high smut potential, being a look at the lives of the dancers at a strip club. What an unexpected delight this was, everything that ‘Striptease’ and ‘Showgirls’ were NOT. Funny, moving, thought-provoking, warm, sensitive and, I have to admit, sexy! I could excuse myself on the basis that it does feature the extraordinary face of Sandra Oh who is at least half-Korean, but, to be brutally honest, some of the farang dancers seemed rather attractive too – I only recognised Jennifer Tilly and the amazing Daryl Hannah, now 41 and still as fit as a fiddle, without any of the obvious enhancements Demi Moore deemed necessary!! The movie was developed from improvisations by the cast and despite featuring the predictable ‘dancer with drug problem’, ‘pregnant dancer’, ‘dancer with the chance to go straight who can’t quite do it’, ‘dancer with incest-related problems’ and ‘dancer with only half a clue what is going on” (where have we met these characters before) it raised several belly laughs and a couple of tremblings in the trouser area which is more than I get for B100 from most girls in NEP these days. OK, it is probably a fucking awful movie, sentimentalized, mawkish, predictable, slushy, whatever but it hit the spot for me and whatever the flaws in the ‘plot’ I thought the acting was really good throughout. 2 out of 2 get the ‘ding!!’ from me and tonight’s double header looks safe enough with ‘Mortal Tremors’ from the chap who did ‘Diva’ and ‘Betty Blue’, plus a Korean movie – ‘Girls’ Night Out’ which could get lively. Friday for me is ‘Beijing Rocks’ and Bjork in ‘Dancer in the Dark’. LG PS http://www.bkkfilm.com [ November 21, 2001: Message edited by: Long Gun ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sukhumvit Posted November 24, 2001 Report Share Posted November 24, 2001 Did you see Beijing Rocks? What was the story? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.