Tears of the Black Tiger

Wisit Sasanatieng, Thailand, 2000, 97 minutes

Filmed entirely on location on the wild frontier between Shakespearean tragedy and drug induced psychosis, in Full Seeping Technicolor, Tears of the Black Tiger sweats and bleeds sensation.

Dum (Chartchai Ngamsan) is the peasant gunslinger of the title, the cause of his woe his childhood sweetheart, city girl Rumpoey (Stella Mallucchi). Since they were parted, promising to wait for one another, her father has become governor where Dum is wanted. She is resigned to marrying the police captain Kumjorn, and since this is a world where men are men, women are ornamental and guns are apparently compulsory she has no choice but to wait to be rescued.

When Dum is ordered by his mustachioe-twirling boss Fai to execute a captive, he finds himself face to face with Kumjorn. He has one request - that Dum tell his fiancee how he died. Recognising Rumpoey, Dum cannot kill the man he believes she now loves and lets him escape, resolving to forget her. But when Fai hears of this, he resolves to take his revenge at the couple’s wedding. Fai being a man with a soft spot for rocket launchers, Dum realises that he must warn the police if he is to save Rumpoey.

But don’t let the done-to-death plot fool you. This is all part of the film’s obvious relishing of its world, which extends to its audience. The narrative teases you, unravelling its secrets from a point that encapsulates the film’s spirit - the luminous Malucchi in a crimson dress in a powder-blue sala, clutching Dum’s photo, waiting.

For even though this film is excruciatingly violent (check out the exploding brain), and the appalling Thai-style country and western numbers about the misery of life jar, take seriously the promise that love is an ambiguous force, as the lover’s lives continually prove. Somehow, through the dwarves, the purple sunsets and the semi-automatics, Tears of the Black Tiger manages to move as well.

Review by Rosie Anderson
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2002