Use your noodle (Tears Of The Black Tiger (DVD))

Member Name: x_elff_x

Product:	Tears Of The Black Tiger (DVD)
Date:	07/09/01 (535 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Colours, Camp, Cillings???

Disadvantages: Potty rather than plotty

Hi folks, apologies to anyone who has already read this opinion as part of my Edinburgh Film Festival opinion, but I felt it might be more use to include it here too, especially since the Festival is over. I have, in fact, added to it a little since then, so it isn't a straight copy.

Tears of the Black Tiger (Fai Talai Jone)

Director Wisit Sasanatieng
Running Time: 114 minutes
Made Thailand 2001

Picture the scene: a purdy young Miss in a purdy pink frock is walking across a bridge carrying a suitcase and holding a parasol, while lonesome harmonica mourns in the background.

It has all the makings of the great start to a good ol' Western... that is until you realise she is holding the parasol to keep off the rain and is walking over a lily pond to reach a sala.Throw in the super-saturated colours, reminiscent of Dorothy Gale's adverntures in Oz and you just know you're not in Kansas any more.

Where you are, in fact, is just about as far from Kansas as you could get, Thailand. The purdy Miss in question is Rumpoey (Stella Malucchi), the daughter of a rich city governor, and she is waiting for her sweetheart, Dum (Chartchai Ngamsan), the country peasant boy she met and fell in love as a child evacuee, when he defended her honour.

At a chance meeting as students some years later, Dum again finds himself called on to rescue her yet again, and afterwards they exchange promises to be together no matter what.

Matters, however, become complicated by when Dum returns to his father's farm and, on discovering that he has been the victim of a brutal attack decides to turn bandit - complete with rather natty turquoise neckerchief - to avenge his murder. Rumpoey's father also causes a few complications, by arranging for her to be betrothed to local police Captain Kumjorn (Arawat Ruangvuth).

This may sound like a classic love triangle tale, but there is little time for
romance amid all the wry sideswipes at the Western genre. I spotted a direct lift from Once Upon a Time in The West, but I am sure there are many many more.

Killings, of which there are many, take on a comic strip feel. We see bullets whizzing through the air and blood so magenta it drenches the landscape - and amid all this, we find ourselves laughing. In one particularly memorable scene, for example, we watch Dum single-handedly gun down an entire household of 'bad guys', murdering the last using the kind of bullet ricochet scene usually only seen in Tom and Jerry cartoons. And just in case you missed it, the director treats us to a slow-motion action replay.

Director Sasanatieng has certainly created an ephemeral, yet engaging film. However, I don't believe this film will never be considered a classic which revolutionises the genre in the same way as Spaghetti Westerns of the past. This is primarily because the plot is thin and lacks many of the deeper concerns which made older Westerns so multi-layered. There is no sense of frontiersmanship to be found here - this movie rests solely on its playfulness. The plot is merely a device for the action, but this doesn't mean that the film isn't entertaining.

The heightened colour only adds to the overall verve of the storytelling, carrying you along with even the most fanciful and cliched twists of the plot. Sasanatieng says his colourising and stylistic techniques were inspired by 1950s Thai director Rattana Pestonji, but I really don't think a Western audience who knows nothing of his work, myself included, need to be put off by this.

Rather it is nice just to sit back and let the day-glo colours wash over you, marvelling at the high-spirited energy of it all and thanking the lord that there are subtitles, for surely, we wouldn't understand the actors even if we spoke Thai, their tongues are so firmly placed in their cheeks.

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