A kick out of Ong-Bak in France

With Tropical Malady getting a rough reception at Cannes, it's nice to know there's another film in France making a good representation for Thailand, lamentable as this situation might seem for fans of "serious" films.

Ong-Bak, the kickboxing action flick, has been playing in commercial theatres in France. In a commentary piece in The Nation, a Thai writer relates the pride he felt in seeing the movie play there.

A picture accompanying the article showed a huge poster for Ong-Bak adorning the front of a French multiplex, where it was playing alongside such other films as Hidalgo, Monster and Starsky & Hutch.

For a Thai person it was thrilling to see billboards of Ong-Bak all over Paris. I got goosebumps as the logo of Sahamongkol Film appeared at the beginning of the film while watching it in a French theatre. Admittedly, I was slightly disappointed when I realised that the film had been dubbed into French. As for the French audience, although they will get the wrong ideas about Muay Thai, maybe they will also learn a bit about our values.

The writer closes by taking a moment to get preachy about ancient artifacts. "I hope this film will cause them some pain of regret when they see all the Buddha heads displayed at the Guimet National Museum of Asian Art, which possesses a large collection of ancient Thai Buddha statues which are mostly just disembodied heads."