It’s time for the Bangkok International Film Festival again, a chance to see movies from all over the world. Again, I am seeing three or four films a day. The descriptions in the free program are poorly written, so choosing what to see is a crap shoot, but some of my choices have been excellent, especially the Thai film Citizen Dog.

Yeah, a good Thai film. I was surprised too. It’s a movie that can’t really be described. The plot is about a boy, Pod, from the country who falls in love with a maid who is obsessed with cleaning and trying to read a mysterious white book written in a strange language which fell off a crashing airplane. Some of the other characters are a motorcycle taxi driver who was killed when it rained helmets one day and is a ghost now, a smoking, swearing teddy bear, and his friend, who met his girlfriend when they “accidentally became husband and wife on an overcrowded bus.” Pod’s grandmother warned him that if he went to Bangkok he would grow a tail, but he ends up becoming famous for being the only person in Bangkok not to grow a tail. The strange characters are matched by surreal visuals with vivid colors

What made the film so interesting, though, was that it actually took place in Bangkok, unlike some strange fantasy world like the other Thai films I’ve seen, and pokes fun at the things you see every day.

The other highlight was Oliver Stone’s Vietnam epic Heaven and Earth. An amazing movie in and of itself, enhanced by the presence of Oliver Stone himself! He answered questions about the film, and talked about filming in Thailand. Much of the shooting was done in Phang Nga, which was devastated by the tsunami, and Phuket stood in for Danang. He also talked about Alexander, which was shot in Ubon in Northeast Thailand.

How cool is that?

Citizen Dog review