Siam Renaissance to open Bangkok film fest

An update to an earlier posting: The title is Siam Renaissance and it will be the opening film at the 2004 Bangkok International Film Festival.

The director is Surapong Pinijkhar. The story is a period romance about a 20th century woman who is somehow transported back to 19th century Siam. He talked a bit about it in an interview with Nation Weekend.

The actress is a French-Thai creation named Florence Vanida Faivre, who sounds like a perfect fit as her character is a worker in the Thai embassy in Paris. According to the director, she speaks English and French fluently, but her Thai was terrible.

Surapong was the director of a five-hour miniseries produced a few years ago by The Nation Channel called The Silk Knot. It was the story of the mysterious disappearance of the Thai silk exporter Jim Thompson. Stretched to five hours, it made for horribly tedious viewing. Even if it were boiled down to two hours, I can't see it being that great. It was pretty disastrous and The Nation Channel has steered clear of backing any other dramas, concentrating on reporting 24-hour news since then.

Anyway, Siam Renaissance will be part of the international competition. Others include Lost in Translation, In America, Peter Webber’s Girl with the Pearl Earring; Italian director Frezan Ozpetek’s Facing Windows; The Barbarian Invasions by Denys Arcand; Carandiru by Hector Babenco; Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring by South Korea’s Kim Ki-duk and Zaitoichi by Takeshi Kitano.