The Coffin (2008)

The Coffin (Ekechai Uekrongtham, 2008)

Ekechai Uekrongtham's The Coffin starts with a reporter narrating from inside a coffin. The camera zooms out from the enclosed space where the reporter is lying to reveal an impressive visual: thousands of coffins, all occupied by men and women, surround a statue of Buddha. An overwhelming buzz of prayers accompanies the visual, adding an otherworldly flavor to the sequence. The reporter narrates that in Thailand, thousands of men and women would flock to Buddhist temples to take part in a bizarre ritual where they would lie inside coffins to get rid of bad luck and cleanse themselves of problems and ailments. The strange ritual, as it turns out, has gained momentous popularity in these hard times. The basic rationale of the ritual is to fool fate or bad spirits into thinking that the participant has died; thus, giving him a clean slate, without all the accumulated bad karma, in his new life.

Uekrongtham mines into this rationale for his film's central conflict. His two main characters undergo the ritual to rid themselves of their respective misfortunes: Chris (Ananda Everingham) wishes that her Japanese girlfriend (Aki Shibuya) wakes up from her coma; Su (Karen Mok), who takes refuge in Bangkok a few days before her wedding to her beloved boyfriend (Andrew Lin), wishes that her lungs are cleared of cancer. True to the testimonials of those who went through the ritual, their prayers are answered. Chris' girlfriend wakes up from her coma while Su is completely healed of her cancer. Unfortunately, their good fortune does not come without a hefty price tag. Su's fiance dies of a car accident while Chris and her boyfriend are continuously haunted by the ghost of a mysterious woman. Fate cannot be fooled. The ritual only disrupts it, displacing the bad karma of the ritual's participants to the people they love.

The Coffin purports to be a horror film. Thus, littered throughout the film are sequences that are designed to scare. Some work, as when Chris is trapped inside the coffin and within the cramped and dark space that he is occupying, appears the token spectre. Most don't, as when Su is haunted by her dead fiance from the mirrors of the several closets. The Coffin musters tired horror tropes and techniques as ancient as Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998) to satisfy the necessitated commercial aspirations of the film, making the effort a tad forced, if not totally inconsequential. For sure, Uekrongtham garners a few creepy moments here and there, but the overall effort is quite insignificant and redundant, especially considering that the faddish genre is currently in an extended stay in the cineplexes, sustained only by the few gems (like Kiyoshi Kurosawa's subversive Retribution (2006)) that appear every now and then.

Uekrongtham has mastered visualizing human emotions, considering the fact that his previous films Beautiful Boxer (2003), about a transexual boy forced by fate and circumstance into a manly sport and quite humorously, is good at it, and Pleasure Factory (2007), about the several denizens of the hidden red light district of Singapore, are all very human stories. You can somewhat observe his ease and comfort in emphasizing loss and guilt in The Coffin. There are several sublime moments that tend to release you from the unnecessary whittled tension that the several inserted horror sequences provide, as when Su wakes up to discover her fiance beside her, then discovering that her fiance has in fact died, and looks upon her fiance's ghost with an expression of discomforted pity and guilt. The film's denouement, where Chris reveals the mystery of the girl haunting him, is emotionally engaging, filmed with refreshing simplicity and restraint by Uekrongtham with just Chris and the ghost having an intimate conversation over a field of grass that was once the setting of a nightmare.

Had The Coffin been made as intended by Uekrongtham, an examination on death and loss, instead of the confused shapeshifter that it is now, it could have been something more memorable. Unfortunately, that's a prospect that we might never know. As it is, it is merely passable and harmless entertainment. The Coffin is something you momentarily enjoy before burying it the next day to be forgotten for the rest of your life.

Beautiful Boxer (2003)

Beautiful Boxer (Ekachai Uekrongtham, 2003)

Thailand is leaps and bounds ahead of most other nations when it comes to tolerance or acceptance of homosexuality. After all, cheap and quick sex change operations can be had in Thailand (the industry being one of the motivators for the Thai tourism board). The reasons for this may be due to the fact that the Buddhist nation rationalizes homosexuality as a result of karma. Religious or social norms as reasons, such tolerance is a beautiful thing and naturally, it will spread to the nation's culture, more significantly, its cinema. Thailand's cinematic output is mainly composed of the traditional dramas, the horror films, and the gender-sensitive films. Films like Iron Ladies (Youngyooth Thongkonthun, 2000), and its sequel, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's mystic gay film Tropical Malady (2004), and his less appreciated James Bond clone The Adventures of Iron Pussy (2003) have made Thailand a rich source of quality gay cinema in Asia.

Ekechai Uekrongtham's Beautiful Boxer is one of Thailand's locally grown gay-themed films that got international accolades from different film festivals. Interestingly, Beautiful Boxer is purely conventional fare. The film, a biopic of real-life crossdressing and make-up waking Thai kickboxer Parinaya Charoemphol (Asanee Suwan), doesn't say anything new about the topic, nor does it portray its themes in any particularly new way. It's harmless, oftentimes cute, at times exciting, but morosely unsure of what it really wants itself to be.

The film plays around with the idea of being a film about contradictions. The title itself is a contradiction: a boxer can loosely be described as brave, brash, or strong, but never beautiful. The opening sequence features a boxer donning his gloves, wraps, and other paraphernalia, and is intercut by sequences of a beauty queen wearing make up. The film is dealt with the same kind of paradox, of luxuriously juxtaposed contradictions that never seem to conclude into a coherent conclusion. Parinaya (his male name is Nong Toom) has known he was a female spirit trapped in a male body since he was a kid.

He is oddly attracted to pretty things, and dislikes bloody fights. Yet in an effort to please his mother and raise his family out of poverty, he tries his luck at kickboxing, where he oddly, or fatefully excels. Uekrongtham never really explains how Parinaya survived in a male-dominated sport, through the rigorous training and much of the sweat and the air of machismo dominating the training grounds. Uekrongtham satisfies himself in meager hints, or letting go everything with the fact that Parinaya is lucky enough to be adopted by a tolerating trainer and family, or boisterously foregoing everything with Rocky-style spirit-lifting scenes of inspiration.

Oddly too, Beautiful Boxer is almost absent of any sexual connotations, or romantic interests for the titular character. It may be said that transvestites, or transgender individuals are rarely homosexuals, but why bother with hints? Uekrongtham is an able filmmaker. His storytelling techniques overcome the screenplay's weakness (notably the fact that it placed the story within a laughable interview between a clumsy foreigner and Parinaya, a month after her sex change operation --- the circumstances leading to the interview is even more laughable with Parinaya rescuing the interviewer from thugs like a mysterious superhero), and he has a definite visual style that complements the film's numerous kickboxing fights. Yet, Uekrongtham delights in Freudian psychology too much: with his staging of numerous dream sequences (some bordering or trespassing the thin line of schmaltz). It's all good: fine and watchable, but not entirely good enough.