It's criminal

I don't know what I was thinking, but I've missed the chance to see two films that were released back-to-back in local cinemas starring two of Thailand's hottest actresses.

First there was The Passion, starring drop-dead bombshell "Tak" Bongkot Kongmalai, known worldwide as the mudbath girl from Tom Yum Goong (or The Protector - can't imagine the Weinsteins would cut that scene). The other is The Victim, starring "May" Pichanart Sakhakorn, who portrayed the love interest in Pattaya Maniac and the blind woman in Buppha Rahtree 2.

In The Passion Tak portrays a woman who is sexually assaulted in a movie cineplex by the theater owner and spends the rest of the film trying to get out of the mall, which if you've been to movies late at night in Bangkok multiplexes, you can probably relate to.

The Victim deals with the weird Thai custom of having criminals re-enact the crimes they've committed for the benefit of the media. You'll see pictures in the paper all the time, mainly featuring people pointing at things. It's bizarre. May portrays a young struggling actress who tries to get a job as a professional laugher for a game show. She parleys the audition into a job working for the cops as a "victim" for crime re-enactments. This leads to her being connected with a case involved a murdered Miss Thailand. The posters make it look like a pretty grim affair.

Both films are still in theaters, but are only in outlying areas where its likely no English subtitles are needed.

However, I'm not totally out of luck: there's reviews of them both (interjected with a tourist's view of Thai culture) at the blog, Asian Cinema -While on the Road.


(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)