A quartet of films yesterday, the first two of which I chose not to attend because of work that needed to be done.  The final two, though, were ones I was unwilling to miss:

I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone

Director Tsai Ming-Liang (Rebels of the Neon God, Viva L’amour, What Time is it There? ) makes incredibly minimalist, visually stunning films.  Dialogue is always virtually non-existent and the narrative, if it can be described as that, is more a series of vignettes moving in one direction rather than a story that goes from A to Z.  His films touch on themes of loneliness, love, and how people in modern life struggle to find a connection with others.  For most viewers, his films move at much too languid a pace – a scene of a woman crying over a failed relationship in Viva L’amour goes on for five minutes – but I find his works to be haunting, lingering in my mind for a long time afterwards.

The story is not too complex, although unlikely: set in the darker, multi-ethnic immigrant side of the director’s native Kuala Lumpur, Hsiao-kang, a homeless Chinese man (Lee Kang-Sheng, the director’s muse) is beaten by some con men, subsequently discovered on the street by a group of illegal Bangladeshi workers who are carrying a flea-bitten mattress they’ve found back to their flat.  They load him onto the mattress and bring him back, too.

One of the workers, Rawang (Norman Bin Atun) nurses Hsiao-kang back to health with a loving attentiveness that never blossoms into anything more.  Perhaps he is content just to have another human being to care for, when his job is working alone at the abandoned construction site of an office building (these shells where building stopped after the economic crisis of 1997 will be familiar to those of you who’ve travelled to Bangkok or KL), supervising the pumps that are slowly removing water from a flooded basement.

As Hsiao-kang regains his strength, he starts to explore the surrounding neighborhood, meeting Chyi, a waitress at a coffee-shop who lives upstairs at her female boss’ house where she is also responsible for carrying for the boss’ paralyized, possibly comatose son (also played by Lee Kang-Sheng, in a bit of confusing casting).

A love triangle forms between Hsiao-kang, Chyi and her boss, and eventually becomes a rectangle also involving Rawang.  As the title implies, no one wants to sleep alone.  But none of this develops very clearly; instead every attempt to find physical connection is halting and, often, halted.  One of the most interesting scenes is when Hsiao-kang and Chyi drag that flea-infested mattress to the construction site and attempt to make love.  Amidst the heavy smoke that has blanketed the city from forest fires in far-away Indonesia, despite their improvised masks, Hsiao-kang and Chyi’s love-making descends into a symphony of hacking coughs that keep them from connecting in their intended way.

Cameraman Liao Pen-Jung has paired with Tsai on his previous works and together they continue to create beautiful images that show a masterful understanding of light.  One of the most gorgeous shots – apart from the scenes in the abandoned shell of a building, which are incredibly beautiful – is when Rawang helps Hsiao-kang to the bathroom to relieve himself when he is too weak to do it himself.  As they stand there, arms around each other, the light falls across them from a nearby window illuminating a dark and barren concrete room.  It is an image that would be considered masterful in any other medium.

While I viewed this movie I considered that the Thai film I saw the other day, Sanctuary Rhapsody, may have been trying to go for the same effect: slow pace, lingering shots, minimal dialogue.  Sadly, while immitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, there is a wide gulf between mimicry and mastery.

Isabella

Hong Kong director Pang Ho-Cheung (Beyond Our Ken, You Shoot, I Shoot) helms this Macao-set film, which takes place in the days before the handover to China.  Shing (Chapman To), a Macao cop on the take who has been suspended for suspected corruption, is the quintessential bachelor – bringing home a string of girlfriends for one night and sometimes longer.  He wakes up one morning to find a young lady, Yan (Isabella Leong) sitting in his living room, presumably his lover from the night before.  She informs him that she is his daughter and that her mother – his first girlfriend – recently died of cancer.

As he panics over the thought of having slept with his daughter, she explains that she actually slipped in as the previous night’s girl left, but not until she has let him sweat about it for a bit.  When he asks what she wants, she asks for 3,000 dollars to pay back rent and for his assistance finding her lost dog, Isabella.

The film is ultimately the story of two people trying to find a family, however incongruous a family it may be.  It takes a fairly convention approach to story-telling, although the director throws in a few misdirections, causing the audience to wonder if a romantic spark is igniting after all.  But it is not the case; instead, Shing warms to having a daughter and Yan finds comfort in finally having a father.

Lest it seem to conventional, there is an additional layer of intrigue as Shing considers what to do with his impending arrest.  He purchases a gun and is set to snuff out the informant who snitched on him, preparing also to flee to Thailand with his new-fond daughter.

Visually, the film looks to owe a lot to HK director Wong Kar-Wai.  Some will assert that this visual style is quite common now among HK filmmakers, but Wong was the grandfather of it all.  Fading Macao makes for a beautiful backdrop, though, with rough colonial textures and hues at once tropical and rusted.  DP Charlie Lam captures it for full effect.  The film also makes strong use of its soundtrack including original music by Peter Kam. 

The World Film Festival has started slow – some days I’m not even watching a single movie – but it is picking up.  Yesterday I caught a Thai independent film called Sanctuary Rhapsody by director Supucksarun Sumonnapraprad.  The description was as follows:

A girl tries to enter the world of men, but it’s a world she doesn’t understand and has little feeling for.

What it ended up being was a poorly-made film from a technical, narrative, and aesthetic regard.  It was essentially long shots of a girl lying around the house, doing laundry and other chores, intercut with various conversations in which one man, or that man and his friend, or just the friend, would sit at a small restaurant and talk – or not talk – as the hand-held camera bobbed around like a home video.  Minimal dialogue, no story line, no point of confrontation nor resolution.  And the whole thing looked like crap.  If you’re going to make a film, even an inexpensive one shot on digital video, first spend some time watching well-made movies and observing how the film is put together.

Anyhow, yesterday’s second movie was much better:

Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros.

Like a flower growing from a crack in a slum sidewalk, twelve-year old Maximo (played by talented newcomer Nathan Lopez) is very gay in a very not-gay place: the gritty shanty town on the outskirts of Manila.   Hanging out with his friends, producing campy Miss Universe drag shows, and enduring the occassional taunts from bullies, Maxi is more accepted than not, despite his incongruousness.

At home, where a shrine to his mother sits in a corner, Maxi plays doting mother figure to his father and two brothers, all of whom are petty criminals.  Surprisingly, they are not only tolerant but are very loving of him, teasing him from time to time but accepting him for who and what he is.  (Left: Maxi with one of his brothers)

Things change when a handsome new policeman (JR Valentin) rescues Maxi when he is being attacked one night, taking him back to his house.  The cop becomes a love interest who takes Maxi’s attention with tremendous patience, despite some teasing from the boys down at the station. 

As a corrupt police chief is forced to retire and replaced, the cop is eager to help the new chief tackle the local crime problem, having a very clear-cut sense of right and wrong.  Trying to set Maxi on a path away from the crime his family is engaged in, the cop tries to get Maxi to rat on his brother, who commits a murder. 

Ultimately, Maxi is caught in the middle when his family seeks vengence against the squeaky-clean cop and then the police retaliate.

The movie is handled in a loving way, not over-wrought, not over-acted.  Director Auraeus Solito’s debut addresses what might otherwise be a taboo subject – the love of a pre-teen for an adult – in a very sensitive way.  Well-constructed and well-acted, the film grows like that flower in the sidewalk’s crack, becoming so much more than one might expect. 

It is the middle of a nearly month-long school holiday, coinciding with the end of the rainy season and in most parts of the country, with the rice harvest.  In Samut Songkhram there isn’t much rice being grown, but that’s when we take the mid-year break anyhow.

While the students have the time off, the teachers are still working.  Ajarn Yai decided her “family” of teachers needed to go somewhere and do something fun, so she arranged a day trip to Hua Hin, a beach town about another hour south of Samut Songkhram.  Considering us a part of her academic family, she invited Tod and I along.

A rental van and driver was arranged and we were told to be at the school at 7:00 – a good hour (and more) before we usually arrive to teach.  Ajarn Yai called me the night before to make sure I’d be there.  Then she tried calling Tod.  Getting no answer (he was watching a film), she called me back to make sure he’d be there, too.  Monday morning I picked Tod up at 5:30 and finding traffic very light – not a surprise for such an early hour – we made it there right on time.

So that we could appropriately use funds from the Ministry of Education, our first destination was the Wangklaikangwon Industrial and Community Education College.  This vocational school is a special project of His Majesty the King and is in fact located on acerage that is part of the royal palace in Hua Hin.  The King has a summer palace there where in his older age he spends much of his time.

Because of this status as a royal project, the school is provided resources they might not regularly have access to.  The school also places a lot of emphasis on developing the morals and skills of its students, upholding rigorous disciplinary standards that might seem out of place in a college.  In addition to the diploma and certificate programs, the college also offers short-term and special vocational education programs catering both to people who are looking at changing careers as well as at minority hills tribes that live along the Thai-Myanmar border. 

The school’s pride, though, is their television production and satellite training programs.  Linking up with other schools throughout the Kingdom along with schools in other countries, the school produces short courses in areas such as computing, welding, auto mechanics, food and catering, mathematics, and English, filming and editing them at the school and then broadcasting them by satellite uplink to other locations. 

Left: the director of the college shows off one of the two television control rooms with a pair of editing suites in the background.

The director of the school provided us with an overview of the school and its programs and then a tour of its facilities.  The range of television production equipment is impressive, with two master control rooms, a half-dozen editing suites, and two post-production rooms.  Multiple classrooms are wired to serve as studios and cameras are operated in those classrooms, directed remotely from a control room.  Having studied television production at Santa Clara University a dozen years ago, the facilities at Wangklaikangwon College exceed the tools I learned on, many times over.

We concluded the visit by presenting the director with a gift basket containing local treats from Samut Songkhram including palm sugar and other snacks made near the school.  Along with that was a dozen or more coconuts, freshly harvested from trees adjacent to the school.  Ajarn Yai (just for clarification, this is her title, not her name) seemed unsure of whether or not to smile.  When I asked her later, in Thai, why she didn’t smile for the picture she responded in English, “forget, forgot, forgotten.”

After the visit to the school, we headed further into Hua Hin and stopped at a small open-air restaurant that sits across the street from Hua Hin’s new strip mall, home to the department store, supermarket, cinema, and the town’s second (and much larger) Starbucks.  Ah, the quiet beach town is no more.

Now that our business was finished, we headed out to see some sights including a temple with an imposing status of a now-deceased monk who wrote extensive books on Buddhism; a mangrove forest; as well as a stop at the beach in the main town. 

Left: Traditionally intricate detail on a modern glass window at a temple outside Hua Hin. 

The mangrove forest south of Hua Hin is quite amazing.  There is a very well-designed boardwalk that runs a 2-km loop through the forest, giving you an amazing look at the Tim Burton-esque root structure the trees develop.  There is also a nice observation tower that takes you above the canopy.

Left: The thick above-ground (and above-water) roots of the mangrove forest.  Right: Tod and I on the observation platform overlooking the forest.  Just to the right of him you can see one of the severaly out-of-place condominium complexes that have been built around Hua Hin.  No zoning makes for bad land management.

On the way back, we stopped in the town of Phetchaburi, famed for its sweets and desserts.  Of course we stopped to shop – Thais love to buy khanom (snacks) when they go on a trip.

Driving back into Samut Songkhram, Ajarn Yai asked a rather philosophical question that it took a few minutes to understand the gist of when she tried asking it first in English and then in Thai.  Tod unraveled the question as, “What would you attribute the circumstance of us meeting and becoming involved with the school at Bangkhonthiinai?”  Fate?  Chance?  Destiny? 

I decided that it was serendipity – the happy discovery of something I was not in search of.  Tod and I had a very good conversation on the way home about this topic – fate, chance, serendipity, etc – pondering whether there really is an answer to the question “why?” that humans seem to ask incessantly, or is the act of trying to find an answer just a way of creating structure and order in our minds in order to comfort us?

Tod and I made it back quite late, going on 9:00.  A long day, but a good opportunity to bond more with the team of teachers.  After my outing two weeks ago, I was somewhat concerned about how they would act in the future.  However, as Tod wisely pointed out, they are Thai so it is unlikely they’ll ever do or say anything to my face.  What they say behind me back, however, is an entirely different matter.

Markus arrived from Sydney Saturday morning on a 6:45 am flight and, itching to go back out to the new airport – Suvanrabhumi, the “i” is silent – I offered to pick him up.  Figuring I’d have a good hour to look around and see what’s changed since I participated in a test flight at the end of July, I timed it so I arrived at the airport just about 6:30.

As I drove the three kilometers from the expressway to the terminal, I saw a THAI Airways B747-400 in Star Alliance colors touching down.  “I wonder if…” crossed my mind.  Sure enough, two minutes later I receive a text message: “Just touched down.”

Pulling into the 5,000-space short term car park, I was shocked to discover that the fifth level, the one on which you enter, was packed with cars.  In familiar Thai fashion, a la the dearly departed Don Mueang Airport, cars were double parked, parking breaks disengaged for easy rolling.  “This can’t be,” I thought to myself.

So I wound through the maze and located the descent ramp.  As I arrived at the fourth level, my suspicions were confirmed: the Thais are really just creatures of habit.  Bangkokians have so long associated airport car parks with the overcrowded ones at the old airport, that none of them could bring themselves to consider looking at the other levels of the car park.  Which were nearly empty, I might add.

The airport is showing many signs of still not quite being ready for prime time yet.  The stairs, glass, pedestrian walkways, and elevators in the car park are filthy.  Halfway across the bridge to the terminal, some mysterious line of demarcation is crossed and suddenly the spotlessness, or near-spotlessness, that one can enjoy with abundant supplies of hideously inexpensive labor, reappeared.

There are still a shortage of shops and places to eat.  Many storefronts are still closed; many floors tiles are still cracked; many needed signs are missing; many restrooms are still too-small, poorly finished, and dirty; and as I discovered Sunday afternoon when dropping Tawn off for his flight to India, the air conditioning towers are inadequate to the task.  But the real affront is the arrivals area where bleary-eyed travellers exit from the teens of hours on a jet, having just made their way first through passport control and then through customs, push their heavily-laden luggage trolleys out the frosted glass doors and into a sea of chaos.

The room is insufficient in front of this exit.  Touts, tour guides, hoteliers, chauffeurs and the general public are crowded into two small areas with a lack of physical depth.  The idea of meeting anybody is laughable and I’m thinking very carefully about how I’ll handle this with my upcoming guests. 

It is always a bit unnerving when you arrive in another country and you can’t find the face you’re looking for in the crowd.  This will be that much worse, thanks to the poor design of Airports of Thailand and some renowned German architectural firm.

Returning Sunday afternoon, the better part of the three kilometers from the expressway had cars stopped along it.  Sightseeers from the suburbs and nearby provinces, stopped to watch the planes.  This access road is an expressway in its own right, four lanes in each direction, speeds in exces of 80 kmph.  No place for traffic to be stopped with the kids out watching the planes.

Taking the turnoff toward the car park, traffic came to a halt, three rows of cars across in a ramp striped for two.  To cover just a few hundred meters took twenty minutes.  No clear idea of what the problem was – the exit from one of the two halves of the garage feeds directly into the entry lane for the other half, forcing traffic to cross.  Looking at the sandblasted arrows on the ramps this was not the original arrangement: these ramps used to be exclusively entry ramps with all exits on the ground level, a much better arrangement.

So what was the holdup?  Well, of course it was the traffic on level five, everyone circling waiting for a space or trying to squeeze into one of the parallel double-parking spaces.  So when I finally made it through that mess to the ramp I once again descended and once again found many available spaces on level four, many more spaces on level three, and only about three dozen cars on level two. 

Where were the traffic guards, directing traffic.  There were only three, two of them standing by the elevators to make sure that the luggage trolleys were returned to their designated holding areas.  Nobody was actually directing traffic.  It seems to me that the first answer would be to restrict double-parking on level five.  The next answer would be to re-stripe so you can make an immediate right-hand turn after entering and get to the ramps.

Inside the building, there were scads too many people.  Too many large families without baggage.  Too many old couples toddling along, not destined to meet anybody arriving today.  Too many tourists.  People camped out on the floor by the air conditioning towers, picnicing.  I kid you not.

As we ate a sandwich (sit-down restaurants were overflowing), Tawn said, “The question is, are Thais ready for a building like this?”

West Side Story

Saturday afternoon, Markus and Tam joined us for a matinee of Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Soundheim’s West Side Story.  This has been billed as the first-ever Broadway musical with a New York cast in Thailand.  Not sure what that really means. 

Only here for eight performances, it is a pretty lightweight (physically lightweight, in terms of sets) touring company, although it was supplemented by a very good orchestra.  Looks like many of the members may be locals with only a select number of musicians actually sent on with the tour.

The venue was the Thailand Cultural Center, with its beautiful curtain (picture right) depicting classic Buddhist imagery. 

The performance was good, really solid dancing.  Tawn didn’t realize at first West Side Story’s history as one of the first modern American musicals to have extensive ballet sequences.  Midway through the first act he said to me, “it needs more singing.”  The singing itself was good although the miking and sound system lent it a hollowness that was not enjoyable.

It was a fun time, all in all, and of course we always enjoy our time spent with Markus and Tam. 

That evening we met up with them and Pune and drove to the Great American Rib Company on Sukhumvit 36 for some barbeque.  I ate only enough to be satisfied, nothing more.

Monday I’m heading with Tod to Samut Songkhram for a teacher in-service / team-building day.  Field trip to Petchaburi province with the teachers.  Have to pick Tod up at 5:30.  egads.

Friday began with a 3:30 am call with my manager to conduct and record a conference call for later use as a training session.  This was the only time that would work for both our schedules and it needed to be done.  The advantage of starting at 3:30 in the morning is that by lunchtime, I’ve pretty much put in a full day of work!  So I headed out in the afternoon, purchased the remaining tickets for the World Film Festival that I had not yet purchased, and caught an early afternoon documentary, Weg.

Directed by German photographer and film-maker Wolfgang Bellwinkel, this documentary portrays three foreigners whose home has become Bangkok – either through circumstance or choice.

We meet ex-junkie Chris, an American walking the edge between survival and recovery; English teacher Alex who has transformed the exotic into the ordinary; and underground photographer Nick who is fascinated by Bangkok’s nightworld of crime and passion.

The filmmaker sets out to examine the question: “Is home a physical reality or simply a state of mind?”  After viewing the debut directorial effort, I’m not sure that’s the question that needed to be asked as it came across more as an afterthought rather than central to the film.

Whether or not it was actually the case, the film reinforced for me the idea that these three people deliberately held Thai culture at arm’s length, seeking not to understand but rather living against it, like a very large backdrop that could really be any other backdrop but in this case just happened to be Thailand.

The two elements that led me to this conclusion were the director’s extensive use of footage of Khrungthep, shot almost entirely on, in, by, or of the Skytrain which, for the most part, runs only in areas of the city that cater to foreigners.  There’s more to the city than that and I think that a wider variety of footage would have reinforced the depth to which these people have integrated into a city where in two of the three cases, they have lived for more than a dozen years.

The second element was the director’s decision not to subtitle the Thai that was spoken in the film.  While not extensive, the subjects of the film converse with their girlfriends and other people in Thai and there is some additional dialoge by other characters that is in Thai, but we do not get any translation.  The German is translated and one of the characters speaks only English, but the Thai remains a language that, seemingly, is an irrelevant part of their world.

When I inquired about this during the Q&A the director responded that he had made this choice because what was being said didn’t move the story forward.  That may be true, but I think the act of not translating – given that his self-identified target audience (Germans) would not be able to understand what was said – reinforces that the Thai culture is irrelevant and it is unnecessary for us (or, by virtue of our observations as an audience, any foreigners choosing to live in Thailand) to make an attempt to understand the culture we choose to live in.

Is it cultural imperialsim?  Possibly a harsh criticism, but one that may be justified.

Last night Tawn and I saw our first movie of the Bangkok World Film Festival.  Not thinking clearly, I arranged for a conference call with my boss at the same time, to record a training presentation over the phone.  So I rescheduled; the only time available for the rest of the week on her schedule was Thursday afternoon her time, meaning that I was up at 3:00 am Friday for a 3:30 call!  Yawn!

But enough about that.  What about the movie?

Paris je t’aime (I Love Paris)

What is Paris to you?  Each of us have a different memory of the City of Lights, a different sense and feeling of what it means to be in Paris.  In this ambitious film, twenty directors from around the globe are each given just a few minutes to tell a story about a particular arrondissement.  The films range from funny to dramatic to terrifying (in a comic way), and each concludes with the shot or scene that opens the subsequent film.

Far from being a montage of postcard views of Paris, these are the stories of people in Paris – for what gives Paris its life other than its people?  Most of the films are in French, a few are in English and all of them are about love… and Paris.

Here are most of the short films:

Montmartre
Directed, written by Bruno Podalydes.  With: Florence Muller, Podalydes.

An offbeat sense of humor is established from the opening story, in which a frustrated man (writer-director Bruno Podalydes) struggles to find a parking spot only to spend the time parked complaining aloud about why he can’t find a girlfriend.  Then a lovely young woman faints beside his car.  Oui, it is true love!

Quais de Seine
Directed by Gurinder Chadha (“Bend It Like Bekham”). Screenplay, Paul Mayeda Berges, Chadha.  With: Leila Bekhti, Cyril Descours.

With a light touch and an eye for the glories of a sunny day, Gurinder Chadha offers a pitch-perfect commentary on the idiocy of religious and racial stereotyping as a young man learns more from a modest hijab-wearing young woman than from his leering buddies.

Le Marais
Directed, written by Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting”).   With: Marianne Faithfull, Elias McConnell, Gaspard Ulliel.

An atmospheric short in which a fresh young man delivers a frank and yearning monologue – a tapesty of every pick-up line ever used – to a print shop staffer, whose silence has a mysterious cause.

Tuileries
Directed, written by Joel and Ethan Coen (“Fargo”). With: Steve Buscemi A

A hilarious tale of an American tourist at the Tuileries Metro stop who learns just how accurate his guidebook is.  When the guidebook says, “don’t make eye contact,” it really means it!

Loin du 16eme
Directed, written by Walter Salles (“The Motorcycle Diaries”) and Daniela Thomas.  With: Catalina Sandino Moreno.

Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas paint a wrenching portrait of the gulf between a poor immigrant servant’s experience of motherhood and that of her employer. 

Porte de Choisy
Directed, written by Christopher Doyle (DP, “In the Mood For Love”).  With: Barbet Schroeder, Li Xin.

An ambitious musical fantasty and erstwhile commentary on the fetishizing of the Asian female within haute couture is set in Chinatown but is really all over the map as noted director Barbet Schroeder plays a hair care products rep.

Bastille
Directed, written by Isabelle Coixet.  With: Sergio Castellitto, Miranda Richardson.

An intensely bittersweet take on a man about to leave his wife for his mistress, until he learns she is diagnosed with terminal leukemia and, rising to the occassion, learns to love her again.

Place des Victoires
Directed, written by Nobuhiro Suwa.  With: Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Hippolyte Girardot.

Binoche grieves for her dead son in a parable about a cowboy who rides the midnight streets of Paris.  She is finally able to let go, letting the cowboy ferry her son to the next world. 

Tour Eiffel
Directed, written by Sylvain Chomet.  With: Paul Putner, Yolande Moreau.

Sylvain Chomet, the gifted animator of “The Triplettes of Belleville” directs live actors for the first time, imbuing them with much of the off-kilter humor that’s his trademark.  This film answers the question, how do mimes find true love?

Parc Monceau
Directed, written by Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien).  With: Nick Nolte, Ludivine Sagnier.

Alfonso Cuaron plays with sound, space and viewer assumptions in a long tracking shot with a mild twist as his camera follows an probable May-December romance.

Pigalle
Directed, written by Richard LaGravanese (Writer, “The Horse Whisperer”).  With: Bob Hoskins, Fanny Ardant. 

Fanny Ardant and Bob Hoskins play a couple unsure just how theatrical their sex lives should be in Richard LaGravanese’s “Pigalle.”

Place des Fetes
Directed, written by Olivier Schmitz.  With: Aissa Maiga, Seydou Boro.

A new paramedic learns the power of even the briefest of human interactions while treating a stab victim who sings a love song to her, asking only to invite her for a cup of coffee.

Faubourg Saint-Denis
Directed by Tom Tykwer (“Run, Lola, Run”).  With: Natalie Portman, Melchior Beslon. 

The tale of an actress trying to break off her affair with a blind linguist holds a surprise in an intensity that overtakes the characters. 

14^th Arrondissement
Directed, written by Alexander Payne.  With: Margo Martindale. 

This narrative of a Denver matron’s week-long and long-awaited visit Paris to improve her halting French begins in sarcasm and ends in sympathy.  This is the film that most spoke to me, personally.

Quartier Latin
Directed by Gerard Depardieu, Frederic Auburtin. Screenplay, Gena Rowlands. With: Rowlands, Ben Gazzara

A cafe appointment with edgy yet affectionate sparring between a long-married couple who are on the verge of a divorce.

Pere-Lachaise
Directed, written by Wes Craven.  With: Emily Mortimer and Rufus Sewell. 

Wes Craven naturally gravitates to a graveyard for his oddball contribution involving Oscar Wilde giving love advice to the living.

Very insightful column from Ron Elving, of National Public Radio’s “Watching Washington” regarding a “dirty secret” about the House of Representatives and its Republican members. 

It now appears there have been three Mark Foley landmines waiting to explode beneath the feet of congressional Republicans.

The first was the aggressive behavior of the six-term veteran Foley, who resigned from Congress Sept. 29 when the raw nature of his interest in congressional pages became public. Foley actually shocked Washington, and that’s not easy to do in our time.

Bad as it was, that was just the first explosion.

The second came when people realized how much had been known about Foley’s attention to pages and pursuit of former pages. It seems that at a minimum, several members of Congress and its staff were aware of the problem.

This second explosion was more damaging than the first. It created the impression that the Republican leaders in the House were more concerned with political damage than with protecting the pages. Polls show most Americans now believe this.

As for the third landmine, it’s still lying un-detonated, just below the surface on Capitol Hill. And it has the potential to cause the most far-reaching damage of all.

This untouched landmine is the fact that quite a few of the people who are essential to running the House are gay, and many of them are keeping it a secret. This includes some members and many staff. And it most definitely includes Republicans.

In fact, because Hill gays who are Democrats are more likely to be out — having less to fear in terms of reprisal — the closeted gays are more likely as a rule to be Republican.

All this is ho-hum to many denizens of Washington. The presence of gays among the congressional members and staff is old news, if rarely discussed in public. In practical terms, most on the Hill have gotten over it, including many of the most conservative Republicans in both chambers.

But can the same be said for some of the Republican Party’s most ardent supporters? …

So as to not entirely pilfer the copyrighted material, I’ll ask that you read the rest of Elving’s article by clicking here.

My prediction is that, eventually, there will be a major clash within the Republican Party between the wing of that party more concerned about social conservativism, and the wing of the party – one might call them the Libertarians – more concerned with economic and foreign policy conservativism.

Especially for my readers outside the US who find that American poiltics leaves them scratching their heads, I’ll share these further observations:

It is extremely popular within US punditry (read: mainstream media) to play up the “great divide” between the Blue States and Red States, Democrats and Republicans, Conservatives and Liberals.  But the reality is much different: The vast majority of Americans are fairly close together on most issues.

• Socially, most Americans generally favor a “live and let live” approach, not liking the idea of discrimination while also being a bit uncomfortable with radical breaks from the past such as giving gay people the right to marry in the exact same way straight people do.
• Morally, most Americans agree that things such as abortion are not desireable and would like to see the number of abortions minimized, while being wary of excessive government control over personal decisions.
• Economically, most Americans would like to see a balanced budget, meetings the needs of today while ensuring financial security for future generations.  Most Americans favor some safety net for those who are down on their luck, but also believe that individuals “pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps” is what made the country great.
• Internationally, most Americans are fearful about the uncertainty of this age of international terrorism and want to take preventative measures, but are concerned about their governement having overreaching powers that limit personal freedoms, as well as not wanting to be involved in military conflicts in other countries.

The challenge we have as a populace is in breaking out of this “either/or”, “us/them”, “blue/red” dichotomy and insisting that our elected officials (and those running for office) begin to speak to the vast center of our population rather than pandering to the extremities.

The University of Michigan has an interesting article on their website showing conventional and more accurate ways to look at this supposed political dichotomy:

The (con tiguous 48) states of the country are colored red or blue to indicate whether a majority of their voters voted for the Republican candidate (George W. Bush) or the Democratic candidate (John F. Kerry) respectively in the 2004 Presidential election.  The map gives the superficial impression that the “red states” dominate the country, since they cover far more area than the blue ones.  This is misleading because it fails to take into account the fact that most of the red states have small populations, whereas most of the blue states have large ones.

If this is corrected for by making use of a cartogram, a map in which the sizes of states have been rescaled according to their population, we see more of a balance.  However, there is in fact still more red than blue on this map, even after allowing for population sizes. Of course, we know that nationwide the percentages of voters voting for either candidate were almost identical, so what is going on here?

The answer seems to be that the amount of red on the map is skewed because there are a lot of counties in which only a slim majority voted Republican. One possible way to allow for this, suggested by Robert Vanderbei at Princeton University, is to use not just two colors on the map, red and blue, but instead to use red, blue, and shades of purple to indicate percentages of voters. Here is what the normal map looks like if you do this:

And the cartogram, showing that only a rather small area is taken up by true red counties, the rest being mostly shades of purple with patches of blue in the urban areas.

Gosh, and to think that two posts ago I was talking about the spoof of movie posters.

Nam tuam means “water floods.”  It is rainy season in Khrungthep and while that in and of itself is quite usual, given the significant rainfall we’ve had in the mountains to the north, the entire Kingdom has been experiencing a slow-moving flood.  First the Chiang Mai area, then Sukhothai, then last week Ayutthaya.  Now Khrungthep is beginning to see the very high waters.  And on a day when it rains heavily, that water – already challenged by an inadequate drainage system and a low elevation – has nowhere to go.

Late afternoon I had coffee with Kazu one soi down from my apartment.  It started raining while we were there and already the water was ankle-deep in some places by the time I headed home.  Standing on the corner trying to figure out the best way to cross the water, dozens of large cockroaches were emerging from the cracks in the pavement and around the utility covers, fleeing the rising tide.  Especially funny (or not) was the way they were running up my pants legs, trying to get to higher ground. 

A few very un-Buddhist flicks of my newspaper sent them flying, to the amusement of three young ladies sitting in their nearby restauran, watching the goings-on.

By the time Tawn finally arrived home from work about 8:00 he told me that the street was flooded.  “Oh, sure,” I said, unimpressed, “it floods every time it rains.”  He insisted that I should go take a look at it and it was indeed much more flooded than I remember previously.

As I arrived on the street, the air was heavy with the smell of gasoline as the sidewalks (those that weren’t flooded) were filled with motorbikes that had stalled in the water.  Owners tried to repair their engines, while others grabbed a bear or two from 7-11 and chatted.  One car had stalled out in my condo’s driveway and the guards were trying to help the owner as he waited for a tow truck to arrive.

Water was running more than 30 cm deep (about 1 foot) and the lower sidewalks (next to the street) were under water.  Thankfully many of the businesses nearby have a second, higher sidewalk in front of the buildings.  So I went around the adjacent buildings, trying to capture some of the images of Khrungthep struggling with what is likely just the first in a wave of floods.

A view from the third floor of the neighboring office bulding shows the extent of the flooding.  The “no right turn” sign is located on the curb of the lower sidewalk, now completely under water.  Telephone boxes become islands.  

Dozens of motorbikes wait out the flood.  Some of the braver (or higher) ones took to the streets, others just waited patiently. 

Despite the large number of people stranded, there was no anger or frustration.  Tawn reported many people laughing and having a good time, office girls taking off their shoes and gigling as they walked along the sidewalks.

One vendor, selling steamed corn from his bicycle-powered cart, worked his way down the street, selling to those standing around.  The catch: to buy an ear you had to wade out to him!

When Tawn was crossing the street he got near the curb but couldn’t tell where it was.  “Sister,” he cried out to a passing pedestrain, “where’s the edge of the sidewalk?”  She replied that she was standing just on the edge and held out a hand to help guide him up.

Thankfully, Tawn had a pair of flip-flops in the office – many Thais shed their nice shoes and instead wear flip-flops around the office – and so he used these on the trip home, carrying his shoes.  He reported that at the Skytrain station, announcements were being made to kindly remind passengers to please wear their shoes while in the station and on the trains.

This was a working weekend.  With a very large project for my job, I spent the better part of Saturday as well as part of Sunday working.  In between, though, Tawn and I managed to catch two movies, which I’ll talk about in a moment.

Outside of that, there were two other significant events:

Event One: Festival Found

I found out the that World Film Festival of Bangkok will be taking place October 11 through 23.  There is an interesting history here because Bangkok had a film festival for a dozen years but then five years ago the Tourism Authority of Thailand decided that Bangkok needed to become “the” film festival of Asia.  Scrapping the existing staff, they brought in advisors from Beverly Hills and for a reported US$ 4 million plus, have produced a series of glitzy festivals that have been all style, no organization and no substance.  One writer for the Bangkok Post was so upset at their disorganization that last year, less than a week before the start of the festival, he wrote a scathing article pointing out that the organizers had yet to release the schedule of films to the press, the public, or the cinemas showing the films!

Kriengsak Silakong, a francophile Thai who has long been involved in the local film industry, started working the The Nation newspaper to create a competing festival, described by the same Bangkok Post writer as a contrast between “the infamously rich [festival] in January run by tourism people [and] the poorer one in October run by film-loving people.”

The Festival does indeed prove to be quite good from both a programming and an organizational standpoint.  Tawn and I went to one of the cinemas to buy advance tickets and discovered that that cinema could sell us tickets for any of the shows at any of the three venues (all at competing cinema chains) from their box office.  The festival also capped tickets for any show at 100 baht (the “official” festival had tickets running from 140-200 baht with no discounts), 50 baht for students.  Plus, we discovered at the box office, we could buy a pack of five tickets, get a sixth free plus five coupons for free popcorn good at any of the cinemas. 

Here is a selection of some of the films I’ll see:

• Paris, je t’aime – A host of international directors from Wes Craven to Gus Van Zant to Alfonso Cuarón each helm a segment about love and the love of the City of Lights, arrondissement by arrondissement.
• The Banquet – Xiagong Feng’s epic-scale story of murder, betrayal and revenge in the Five Dynasties period, starring Zhang Ziyi and Daniel Wu.
• Sanctuary Rhapsody – Supucksarun Suwonnapraprad’s film about a girl who tries to enter the world of men, finding it more foreign than she imagined.
• The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros – Auraeus Solito directs this coming-of-age story by Michiko Yamamoto about a 12-year old gay boy growing up in the gritty, crime-filled slums of Metro Manila, and his crush on a policeman.
• At the End of the Journey – Director Tanwarin Sukkhapisit’s story of a teacher who hides his feelings for fear of losing his job, until one day a young man enters his life and slowly opens his heart.
• I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone – Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang returns to his hometown of Kuala Lumpur in this meditation on connection and disconnection.  After being robbed and attacked, Hsiao-kang, a homeless Chinese man, is rescued and taken in by some Bangladeshi workers. One of them, Rawang, lets him sleep beside him on an old mattress that he had found on the street. Later, when Chyi, a waitress at a coffee-shop, meets Hsiao-kang, she is filled with lustful desire. As Hsiao-kang slowly recovers, he finds himself caught between Rawang and Chyi – as well as Chyi’s female boss.
• Iklimler (The Climate) – Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan helms and stars in this story of the unspoken reasons that relationships collapse.  Isa (Ceylan) is a dowdy university professor inattentive of his younger TV business wife Bahar.  Both are lonely figures dragged through the ever-changing climate of their inner selves in pursuit of a happiness that no longer belongs to them.
• 12:08 East of Bucharest – This Romanian comedy about conflicting versions of history, set in a small village outside Bucharest, sixteen years after the revolution that ousted Ceausescu.   On the anniversary of that historic day, the owner of the local TV station invites two guests to share their moment of revolutionary glory.  One is an old retiree and sometime Santa Claus, the other a history teacher who has just devoted his entire salary to his drinking debts. Together, they will remember the day when they stormed their town hall shouting “Down with Ceausescu!”  But phone-in viewers dispute the claims of the heroes, who may have been boozing in the bar or making Christmas preparations rather than rebeling in the streets.
• Feast of the Goat – Based on the best-selling novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, Luis Llosa tells the story of Urania Cabral, a beautiful, kind, intelligent and independent Manhattan lawyer who, after an absence of 30 years, returns to the Dominican Republic to face the horrifying circumstances that altered her life forever when she was a teenager and Rafael Leónidas Trujillo a.k.a El Chivo (The Goat) was the iron-handed ruler of this country.
• Closing night offers a rare treat – a screening of Battleship Potemkin, the 1925 silent classic by Sergei M. Eisenstein about a Russian naval mutiny in the city of Odessa that is a standard text for film students everywhere.  This is presented with an added soundtrack by the Pet Shop Boys, proving to be a very interesting addition to this significant black-and-white work.  IMDB link.

One especially refreshing aspect to this programming is that Thai independent features and short films are given good visibility.  The “other” festival was notable for its exclusion of Thai films, a source of much complaint by the local film industry.  It would seem the Tourism Authority is more interested in having foreigners come here to shoot their movies than to support the local movie industry.

Event Two: Visa Run Dilema

As I come to the end of my one-year Type B Non-Immigrant Visa, I’ve spoken with my lawyer about renewing it.  Unfortunately, Thai embassies and consulates in Asia are reluctant to issue such visas and he has suggested that, short of returning to the United States, I should go to a consulate in Australia or Dubai.

My visa expires November 28, the day my parents are set to arrive for a visit.  I’ll have a ten-day window of opportunity before then in which to make a run.  The question is where and how – spending money on an airplane ticket is a distinctly disheartening prospect and I’m not keen to burn up miles on an award ticket, either.

Stay tuned for more updates on how this situation will be resolved.

Event Three: Planning for Visitors

With several sets of visitors queueing up for arrival in November and December – the first week of December may see as many as ten visitors including my parents – I’ve been working to pull together itineraries and make hotel arrangements.  The challenge is in getting a trip to Chiang Mai planned.  There is a gala flora exposition opening in November for three months and this looks to be the big event in Thailand over the winter.  Plane tickets and hotel rooms are filling up and I’m trying to find a place for us before spaces disappear!

Finally, the Movies

Tawn and I did have time for two films this weekend:

Cars

Pixar animation’s John Lasseter helms its latest animated treat, this one a little less compelling than all the others.  Perhaps it is because I just don’t care about cars all that much, whether or not they have voices and facial expressions.  But there is great detail in the filmmaking and Pixar films comes across as such works of art, in comparison to what we see released from many other studios.  Only Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli (“Spirited Away“) seem to equal the craftsmanship, and it is well known that Lasseter is a long-time admirer of master Miyazaki.

Voicing by Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt and Owen Wilson is strongly acted and there are enough subtle jokes (the insects in the tumbleweed town of Radiator Springs are little Volkswagen Beatles with wings) to keep you entertained even as the film runs about twenty minutes longer than necessary.

Films from Pixar are always of especial interest to me because my aunt Sandy’s brother-in-law Mark works at Pixar.  We begin to hear buzz of the films more than a year in advance and although he can’t say much about them, it is fun to hear about concepts and then finally see how they play out – so far, always successfully – on the big screen.

Reinas (Queens)

Starring five of Pedro Almodovar’s leading ladies, Manuel Gomez Pereira’s Reinas is less a story about gay marriage and more a story of the mothers of the gay sons who are going to participate in Spain’s first gay marriages. 

The range of characters is rich and neurotic, with very strong acting.  The stories are themselves a bit too simply drawn and become a tangled mess, sometimes winding up just a little too neatly.  But there is a lot of heart and it is an enjoyable film. 

One thing I particularly appreciated, something we see too little of in the United States film industry, is the appearance of actresses of a certain age who look to be that certain age.  Wrinkles and sagging busts lend so much authenticity to the characters, who all carry themselves with such dignity, whatever burdens they are struggling with.

Carmen

Date: Saturday 7 October 2006
Performed by: Aida Gomez Flamenco Ballet, Spain

Choreography by: Aida Gomez

Based on the opera by Georges Bizet (which is based on the book by Prosper Mérimée, this ballet perfectly expresses the complex, sensual passion of the Andalusian Carmen.  Set in Seville at the end of the 19th century, Carmen challenges Manuelita to a fight outside the tabacco factory where they work.  Instigating the fight, she is aressed by Don José, the Chief of Police and Manuelita’s fiancé.  Carmen seduces Don José, however, and he lets her escape, resulting in his own demotion and arrest.

Some time later, Carmen is at a tavern where she is to meet Don José.  The bullfighter Escamillo appears and she is captivated by him.

The story intensifies and soon, at the bull ring where Excamillo is fighting, Carmen meets Don José and decides to end their affair by returning the ring he gave her as proof of his love.  He is enraged and as the spectators cheer Escamillo, Don José stabs Carmen with his knife and kills her.

Without a doubt, this was one of the standout shows of the entire festival.  The combination of precise technique, masterful coreography, vibrant costuming and stark lighting made for a peformance that married the familiar themes from Carmen with the energetic rhythyms of flamenco. 

After a half-dozen rounds of enthusiastic bows to an appreciative audience, the dancers performed an encore accompanied only by their own clapping, the intensity of the clapping seemingly mirroring the rising beat of their hearts and they stomped through their expressive steps. 

His Excellency the Spanish Ambassador to Thailand presented bouquets of flowers to the four principals on behalf of the Princess Sister. who was in attendance.