SOI COWBOY
Thailand/UK, 2008, 117 minutes, Black and white and colour.
Nicholas Bro, Pim Wallee, Thampany Asan.
Directed by Thomas Clay.
An experimental film that combines British sensibility with contemporary styles of Thai film-making. While it is not exactly boring, it often comes pretty close.
The first 90 minutes are a slow and detailed look, in black and white, of the relationship between a Danish film-maker living in Bangkok and a prostitute he has met at the bar, Soi Cowboy. Many of these scenes are filmed in real time: getting up, a shower while she has breakfast, going to the supermarket… The man has some affection for the girl and she is pregnant. He phones his agent without success. They go for a train trip and stay in a hotel and visit some shrines…
The film abruptly changes (as some recent Thai films) to colour, to the poor countryside, to a farm and work in the fields. The younger son (whom we have seen in the earlier film) comes home with a deadly mission on behalf of the proprietor of the Soi Cowboy. At the bar we see the Dane (all sleeked) and the girl – whether this is how they met or whether this is a kind of film within a film is not clear.
However, the film does open up the complexities and emotions of an inter-racial relationship that is not casual.
1.The impact of the film? An Englishman’s experience in Thailand?
2.The structure of the film: the ordinariness of the ninety minutes of black and white, the details of Tobias and Koi, their everyday life, scenes in real time? The contrast with the transition to colour, going out into the countryside, life in the village? The return to the club and the final song? The song at the beginning and end, its religious dimensions?
3.The title, the club, the women as prostitutes, the men picking them up? As portrayed in the colour section? The girls, the men, brutality, murder? The girls wanting to transcend this background?
4.The opening, the detail of waking up, getting up, work with the computer, the shower, breakfast, the silences? Going to the supermarket? Back at home, minimum talk, the girl pregnant? Tobias going out to buy the gift for her? The return? The decision to go for the trip, going to the town, the train, going to the hotel, going to the ruins, their being lost in the ruins – and the echoes and tribute to Antonioni?
5.The character of Tobias, large, his relationship with Koi? His film, Copenhagen festival, his continually ringing his agent and not getting him? The hopes for his film? His being compliant? A good man, his love for Koi, care for her? His attitude towards Thailand, his experience of Thai culture, language?
6.The colour section, the life in the village, the father in the field, the mother at home, the brother? The arrival of the younger brother (and having seen him in the earlier section as Koi’s brother)? Going to the fields, the night, taking his brother out into the bush, executing him? Bringing his head back to the city? To the club, to the owner, showing him the head? At the safe, getting the money, his being shot?
7.The point of the contrast between these two stories and their effect?
