The acclaimed gay teenage romance and family drama Love of Siam will be released on Region 1 DVD on October 13. Amazon has it ready for pre-order.No surprise that Strand Releasing -- which specializes in queer-oriented titles, among them Bangkok Love Story -- is the one that's picked this up.
How the film is being marketed is telling -- there's the boys -- Mario Maurer and "Pichy" Witwisit Hiranyawongkul -- on the bed, sharing a sweet moment with the little wooden Santa figurine. The posters for the Thai release didn't hint at that type of relationship at all. And the Taiwanese DVD opted for a gauzy, enigmatic sunset photo.
What serves the film best? Will marketing it as a "gay" film -- even though there's more to it than that -- put it into a box that won't be opened by people who might actually like the film?
I don't see many other details about the U.S. release, other than that it's the 150-minute version that was released commercially in Thailand.
Going whole hog and picking up the three-hour director's cut and all the special features that have become available would have been costly I suppose. Which is too bad for U.S. viewers.
The Taiwanese release of the director's cut is chock-full of extras, but there have been complaints about the poor job of subtitling and other technical problems. Part of the deal with the subtitles on the director's cut is it only had a limited theatrical release (House plans a limited revival next month) and was never subtitled in Thailand. Usually, the subtitling folks for the Thai theatrical releases of Thai films do a decent job.
Anyway, I'm pleased that Love of Siam is finally getting a home-video release in North America. Directed by Chookiat Sakveerakul, the film was received with great acclaim in Thailand, collecting many awards, including Subhanahongsa Awards for best director and best film and best actress from the Bangkok Critics for Sinjai Plengpanich, playing a worried mother. It was also Thailand's submission to the Oscars last year.
Thor has more at Something to Sing About. A snip:
A confession, Love of Siam is responsible for my exponentially growing love for Thai cinema. Equally devastating and buoyant, it is a deliberate drama about different aspects of love: familial, romantic, and to an extent, ascetic.
If Love of Siam serves as a gateway drug to more Thai cinema, then that's great.
(Via Something to Sing About)
I always tought that that poster was a fan's editing work, since the original has the two girls betewen Mario and Pitch.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, it's kind of true that out of thailand (Europe, America etc) a film like this it's better sold with a "queer" or "gay" label. There is a market for those kind of movies in west countires. A "straight" thai romance would be a commercial suicide i'm afraid...it's kind of funny though.
Sorry for the bad english!
So it's been a few months since this has been released, and yet still any attempt of mine to find a review of the actual DVD doesn't yield anything. Especially after you told me the other week that another Strand Releasing DVD, "Syndromes and a Century", had subtitles that left something to be desired, I'm curious. Does anybody actually have the Region 1 DVD and know what the specs of it are?
ReplyDeletehi! im one of the solid fan of love of siam after I've watched it, I'm so crave to watch the complete sequel of love of sim 2 to know whether mew and tong live happily ever after or there never been together for the rest of there life. I also want to congratulate pchy and mario for having a beautiful chemistry there are so many fake sequel in the internet so that I want to watch the true sequel of LOS hope u forgive me. P.S hope same actor and actress "pa rin".
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