Pen-ek and Ploy to sing 'Samui Song'

A wife worries about her husband, who’s fallen under the sway of a charismatic cult leader in “Samui Song”, the upcoming new feature film by celebrated director Pen-ek Ratanaruang.

Playing the wife will be Chermarn “Ploy” Boonyasak, the award-winning film and TV actress who is currently on the big screen in the hit romance “Khid Tung Wittaya” (“The Teacher’s Diary”).

She’ll co-star with Vithaya “Pu” Pansringarm, who will play the cult leader, the Holy One. He came to fame last year for his portrayal of a vigilante ex-cop who beats the tar out of Ryan Gosling in “Only God Forgives”, the blood-splattered Bangkok gangster drama directed by Nicolas Winding Refn that polarised critics at the Cannes Film Festival. He’ll be seen in Thai cinemas soon in another movie, director Tom Waller’s “The Last Executioner”, a biopic about Chavoret Jaruboon, the marksman who was the last to carry out executions by rifle in Thai prisons.

On “Samui Song”, Pen-ek reteams with Raymond Phathanavirangoon, who produced the director’s 2012 hitman thriller “Headshot”.

Announcing the new film in Screen Daily, the pair say “Samui Song” will likely be pretty dark but “less serious” than “Headshot”.

“Using Hitchcock as a starting point, it serves as a homage to the kinds of movies I enjoy from Bollywood and Shinya Tsukamoto to Luis Bunuel and Thai cinema from the 1960s,” Pen-ek was quoted as saying by the industry journal.

For Ploy, “Samui Song” offers a much meatier role than she had in the last movie she did with Pen-ek, 2003’s “Last Life in the Universe”. In that one, she was glimpsed only fleetingly, playing a young woman decked out in schoolgirl fetish gear who was the dream object of the film’s protagonist, a Japanese man (played by Tadanobu Asano) hiding out in Bangkok. In the movie, she was the doomed younger sister of the movie’s leading lady, Ploy’s real-life sibling Sinitta. 

Aside from her work on “The Teacher’s Diary”, Ploy, 31, is currently awaiting to sign a third three-year contract to act in Channel 3 dramas. With credits that go back to her teens, her many films include Yuthlert Sippapak’s “Buppa Rahtree” ghost-comedy franchise, Chookiat Sakveerakul’s “Love of Siam” (for which she won a Subahanahongsa Award for supporting actress), ML Bhandevanov “Mom Noi” Devakula’s steamy period romance “Chua Fah Din Salai” (“Eternity”) and Mom Noi’s “Rashomon” adaptation “U Mong Pa Mueang” (“The Gate of the Ghost”).

Look for more news of “Samui Song” as it gears up for production sometime before the end of the year.

 

Did anybody see this?

While the social media was celebrating the prospect of a Pen-ek making a new film, folks were also chatting about a film that hardly anybody saw.

Released on February 27, the comedy “Muay Jin Din Kong Lok” was in and out of cinemas faster than you can say “flop”. 

Pundits who presumably saw it are proclaiming “Muay Jin Din Kong Lok” the worst movie ever, and not just among Thai films, but the worst ever. Period. 

Seems it’s hip now to talk about the movie that turned out to be totally unhip, and failed spectacularly.

Released by VIP Entertainment, “Muay Jin Din Kong Lok” opened on 15 screens and made a whopping Bt29,000. That’s according to figures cited by the Thai Facebook group I Love Movie.

The plot supposedly involved a teenage boy from Bangkok who seeks a change of scenery to heal his broken heart. He moves to a seaside village where he falls for a local lass. But the young woman, the main character in the movie whose title is roughly translated as “Chinese-looking girl who dances until the world ends”, has other ideas.

Given the film’s new life as a subject for sharing on Facebook, perhaps it’ll find an audience on home video or less-legal outlets where hipsters will tune in to watch ironically.