Anyone interested in Thai movies?

[albinon]

Just wonder if anyone's familiar with the most prominent modern Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang? The first Thai film I watched was 6ixtynin9 (there are a few different titles, might be called The Funny Story of 6 and 9 and some others) with that fantastic actress Lalita Panyopas (even though things she did in that flick were not as nice, with a sufficient amount of blood and dark humour Thai style). I remember seeing that film some time in 2002 or so and that was long way before I actually started planning to comprehend Thailand and Thai culture... yet it was a hook which "brought" me there.

Another beautiful film is 'Last Life in the Universe' by the same director (Pen-ek Ratanaruang) telling story about a Japanese gangster expat guy (Asano Tadanobu) in Bangkok who falls for a bargirl who is later killed and then falls (kind of) for her sister.

One more was Invisible Waves again telling a story of a Japanese gangster who's sent to a refuge in Phuket by his boss.

And lastly the newest one by Pen ek is Ploy about a couple coming back from USA to a funeral of their relative in Thailand.

The interesting thing is that in all of these films the director takes an extremely brave approach towards some main problems (or "problems") in Thailand, primarily corruption and sex industry and depicts that in a rather funny manner. Very critical indeed. Another thing is that in two of his films he's depicting lives of expats in Thailand and dialogs take place in 3 or even 4 different languages throughout the film. All in all a good touch of some important issues in Thailand through the movie screen.

There are a few trailes on Tube
Last Life in the Universe
YouTube - Last Life in the Universe Trailer

Ploy
YouTube - Ploy trailer

Christopher Doyle also has got his hands onto some of these which indeed made it something extraordinary.