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Recently, I saw a
sneak preview of the Thai film "Beautiful
Boxer" at the Showcase
Theater in Los Angeles. The event
was hosted by Regent Releasing and Here! Films, who aim to enlarge the
menu of pay-per-view GLBT films on Here!TV, the gay channel.
The theater was
almost full -- as many women as men, including many
Asians. And no wonder. "Beautiful Boxer" is based on the life story of
celebrated Thai
champion kickboxer Nong Toom. He started life as Parinya
Charoenphol, a young man from a poverty-stricken village who forged to
the top in this supermacho martial sport. But he had secret
yearnings to live -- and to kickbox -- as a woman.
Sneak previews are
held for a reason. Audience reaction tells
producers and distributors a lot about how the public will react after
release. Do people laugh in the wrong moment? Not laugh at
all? Do they walk out? Picket the theater? If so, a
film might get sent back to the barn for major makeover -- a new edit,
even a new ending. But Regent and Here! won't have to worry about
this one. The audience laughed when they were supposed to.
They went sad and poignant on cue. You could feel it in the
theater.
Best of all, the
gut-jarring muscle-crunching fight scenes had every
politically correct and supposedly nonviolent person in the audience
saying "Yes!" as Nong Toom kicked the @#&% out of his
opponents. (The Foley people must have had a blast as they cooked
up the sound effects. Feet and elbows and fists hitting home would be
way less fun without Dolby Sound.)
The story started
in Toom's lonely and questioning childhood. His
mother urged her quiet, gentle boy to learn to defend himself so other
boys wouldn't pick on him. For a time his family left him with a
traveling Buddhist monk -- they hoped that the good karma of his
prayers would help them out of poverty. In Buddhism, karma is the
sum total of our actions in this life, which determine our fate in the
next. But when the serene old monk inspired Toom to follow his
own destiny, it led him to stumble on a boxing camp in the
woods.
Toom was captured by
the mystique of the sport -- its amazing moves, its beauty, the
spiritual discipline it demands, but also its power to compel respect
from others.
Everybody saw Toom differently. Other boxers saw his first try at
wearing lipstick as something to laugh and jeer at. His girl
friends saw it as a wonderful secret he shared with them. His
coach saw Toom as a great emerging athletic talent. The promoter
of his bush-league boxing school saw him only as the notorious
contender who would get them to championship matches in the big
city. Indeed, some fans saw him as a freak who wore the lipstick
and red nails just to get publicity. Meanwhile, Toom saw his
sport as a way to earn enough money for sex-change surgery.
But all these different visions wove together to make
karma. In a Buddhist society, karma is...what it is. The
film takes us far from the nasty judgmental and coercive attitudes that
our own athletes face.
Director Ekachai Uekrongtham wrote the script, then did a year's talent
search, looking for a good kickboxer who could act well enough to bring
Nong Toom's life alive for the camera. Handsome young Nukkid
Boonthong did that. He transforms with dignity and conviction,
from gawky village boy to that amazing figure in a key fight scene -- a beautiful girl with long whirling hair and
long red fingernails, whose whirling kicks and fists can knock down an
elephant."
When the film ended, it got a standing ovation. The director and
the great kickboxer herself made their way slowly through the crowd to
the stage, for a lively Q & A. Parinya, tall and radiant in a
flowing Thai-style silk gown, spoke through a translator. She is
now retired from the sport and has a new career as model and
actress. But she still has the long hair and long red nails.
"Beautiful Boxer" will
satisfy the most action-hungry movie viewer. But it's way more
than a damn good sports flick. On the film-festival circuit,
"Beautiful Boxer" has
already won 4 awards --including Best Actor -- at the 54th
Internationale Filmfestspiele in Berlin.
"Beautiful Boxer" is
playing in limited national release, but will also be on DVD at some
point. See the film's Website
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