SAMUI SONG

ไม่มีสมุยสำหรับเธอ

Directed by Pen-ek Ratanaruang

Masters / Germany, Norway, Thailand / 2017 / Drama, Noir / 108 mins / English, Thai with English subtitles / DCP / West Coast Premiere

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SAMUI SONG

UltraStar Mission Valley
Friday, Nov 10, 2017 8:20PM

SAMUI SONG

UltraStar Mission Valley
Sunday, Nov 12, 2017 6:30PM

Description

Official Selection, 2017 Venice Film Festival
Official Selection, 2017 Toronto International Film Festival

SAMUI SONG, Thai New Wave filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s latest tortured noir, is a winding road filled with twists, turns, and a dark comedic death embrace with filmmaking. Inspired by Hitchcock, Buñuel, and Thai films from the 90s, Pen-ek has crafted a slow burn film – squarely located in the rarified space of religious cults, rich western expats, and the TV industry.

Viyada, a popular TV actress (played by real life popular TV actress Cherman Boonyasak), is caught in a double-bind. Vi is contractually trapped in a sick marriage to a French millionaire. Almost as bad, she is perennially typecast as the bitch in soap operas. Hovering throughout her world is the Holy One, a slick monk who registers more like a shady kingpin, and attracts wealthy foreign followers at a Thai retreat, including Vi’s husband. Desperate for a change, Vi needs a way out. A chance encounter with Guy, a hit man with a sick mother, gets murderous wheels turning.

Enter Pen-ek, who slowly unravels the classic Double Indemnity scenario with violent, darkly comedic filmmaking, and creates a world full of ceramic phalluses, cinematic winks, Kafkaesque pharmacies, and Samui, an island refuge, where all is not as it seems. –Christina Ree