Dir. Ekachai Uekrongtham, Thailand, 2004, 112 mins
Cast: Asanee Suwan, Sorapong Chatree, Orn-Anong Panyawong, Nukkid Boonthong
Beautiful Boxer heralds the arrival of an exciting new contender on the World Cinema stage. With this debut film award-winning theatre director Ekachai Uekrongtham has successfully negotiated the tricky leap from stage to screen. His film achieves a powerful and yet poetic synthesis between beauty and brutality.
The film is based on the controversial true story of Thai kick boxer and transvestite Nong Toom (Suwan). With his longed-for sex change just days away, Nong Toom is prompted by a journalist to recall his turbulent development from a boy forced to hide his femininity to a lethal kick boxer, unashamed to wear make-up in the ring. We follow Toom from the rural idyll of Chiang Mai province to the urban inferno of Bangkok as he battles his self-doubt and the prejudice of others to achieve his dream.
The struggle of an individual for acceptance through sporting glory is of course not without precedent in the movies. From the recent Million Dollar Baby to Rocky and Raging Bull boxing has become a cinematic staple in which the underdog, traditionally working-class and more recently female, succeeds despite the odds. Many of the familiar elements, from a draconian training regime to a mentor seeking redemption, are present in Beautiful Boxer. Amidst its celluloid rivals the film is a little like its central character amongst his fellow kick boxers. His friends all want money, sex and celebrity but Nong Toom and the film want something more.
Although Nong Toom abandons his place in a Buddhist monastery at an early age, the film is infused with a spirituality that balances the violence of its action-packed fighting scenes. Toom is a man with a woman’s soul and this conflict is depicted through a series of resonant symbols. Toom’s career as a kick boxer becomes an attempt to reconcile his divided self through honestly presenting himself to the crowd, thereby forcing spectators to accept him as a whole, and earning money for the sex change that will enable him to achieve inner and outer harmony. Such an ideal is extremely Buddhist although his means of achieving it are decidedly not. Tangential issues such as Toom’s sexuality and his media popularity are touched upon but not fully explored.
At the same time the film tells an absorbing story with visual panache. The actors perform well although, as Toom, Asanee Suwan occasionally over-emotes. Most impressively, Uekrongtham achieves a harmony within the conflicts of the film itself. The fighting is visceral enough to dramatise the body yet at times it feels intensely spiritual. Likewise, when cross cut with dancing an intensely masculine performance can suddenly seem feminine just as blood and lipstick can merge in the boxing ring. Hence, from the very opening credits, in which the film cuts between a dancer and a boxer preparing, Beautiful Boxer establishes the polarities that it will proceed to question.
Peter Fraser
Discuss this film here
Beautiful Boxer is released on UK region 2 DVD on 23rd January, 2006, by Tartan Video.
Special Features:
-Director interview
-Interview with the real Beautiful Boxer, Nong Toom
-Interview with Asanee Suwan
-Making of documentary
-Damon Smith film notes
-Original trailer
-DTS Digital Surround 5.1
-Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
-Dolby 2.0 Stereo
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