Is it an accident that a "director's cut" of BEAUTIFUL BOXER, over a year old, appeared for the first time in American theaters this week? It is a Thai movie about a "gender-bending" kick boxer (who wants to finance his sex-change operation), and this week, Clint Eastwood's MILLION DOLLAR BABY, starring Hillary Swank (BOYS DON'T CRY, 1999), a movie about a "female boxer who takes on the big boys,"received an Academy Award Nomination (several, in fact).
I can hardly not believe it.
Well, maybe it's just a coincidence.
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But think about BEAUTIFUL BOXER's underlying subject:
As the majority of people of the World worry about carrying on their work, paying their bills, avoiding disaster and "the war against terror," tens of millions of them are frustrated that their primal essence is out of synch. Great numbers of males would rather they had been born female; great numbers of females vice verse. It is a serious subject, one that almost every society has ignored or declared tabu.
For millennia, the Priests and the Elders intoned: "What cannot be cured must be endured."
Only in the couple of decades or so, has medical science, plastic surgery, and various spa institutions availed such unhappy people the option of hormone treatments and switching their genitalia, instead of leaving them to live guarded lives.
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BEAUTIFUL BOXER tells the more-or-less true story of Parinya Charoenphol (Asanee Suwan), a Thai boxer who became famous by wearing makeup and feminine accouterments while kicking his way to Tokyo for expensive operations and endocrine infusions which turned him into "Nong Tam," a Bangkok "model c*m actress."
As shown in the 118 minute BEAUTIFUL BOXER, one has to at least sympathize with the innocent bewilderment of Chaoenphol's situation. It is a dilemma which must inhabit the dreams and haunt the nightmares of more people than we have statistics on.
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The problem with BEAUTIFUL BOXER is that, with the best will in the world, the ordinary Western viewer will find the picture constantly teetering on the brink of cartoon or stereotype. The main character's motivation is that, when five years-old, he was thrilled at a festival both by boxing and pretty androgynous creatures in silver gowns. Such crude freudianism brings memories of bad jokes about pregnant women being scared by tuba players.
The cross-dressing/transgender plot follows the tried and true [kick] boxing plot of the innocent country lad (Suwan) -- in this case, "a woman trapped in a man's body" -- who catches the attention of a trainer, Pi Chart (Sorrapong Chatree). Pi Chart brings him along to the point where he goes Big Time, first in Bangkok, and later, about to emerge from the chrysalis, he is tested in a climactic bout with a kind of female suma boxer in Tokyo. The real twist obviously is that Chaoenphol flies back to Bangkok as Nong Tam, whose notoriety (quite welcomed in Thailand) makes her, according to the picture's PR, a doubly "exotic toast" of Southeast Asia. There is, of course, a tragic "one for the gipper" complication, but the story has little suspense. Charoenphol just keeps "kicking a*s" or sometimes the back of some guy's neck, if necessary. Because of his prowess in the ring, there is hardly a chance to the very end that he (almost she, by that time) will get smeared, and so the boxing matches only provide the audience spectacle and sight gags.
[At a Bay Area sneak, First Time Director Ekachai Uekrongthaim let the cat out of the basket, when he observed that, on opening first in Thailand (2003), BEAUTIFUL BOXER was 15 minutes shorter. Why? he was asked. "They played it for laughs," he explained. The Western edition filled in the poignancy of Charoenphol/Nong Toom's situation.]
Unfortunately, the crowd pleasing high kicks and Asanee Suwan's lamb-eyed side-looks clash with reality. Suwan, a non-actor but experienced kick boxer, carries off his role well enough, but the screenplay (by Uekrongthaim and Desmond Sim Kim Jin) leaves him little to work with out of the ring. Just what his character's practical sexual orientation may be is never resolved in the film. Other than his family, he has no close relations, aside from the trainer. He makes a sister of a prostitute he is sent to, and he kindly lets down a young Tokyo groupie who, as they used to say, throws herself at him. Presumably, as Nong Toom, he becomes a heterosexual woman, but as such, on the way and once there, he/she spends her time immersed in selecting shades of face powder. The envelop-flashback format, in which a reporter tracks Nong Tam down for an interview, might have allowed her to express an understanding of what it is truly like to be a woman-who-was-once-man, but no such advantage is taken of the device.
*[It is telling that the IMDb lists the full makeup department -- but not the Director of Photography.]
Interestingly, at the sneak preview, not only the director but the producer, the star, and the subject of the film, Nong Toom herself, made appearances. The producer was a fairly tall man, but Nong Toom towered over everyone -- easily a six footer. Her publicity photos (she has a cameo as a beautician in BEAUTIFUL BOXER) carefully show her sitting down, at least not full-length next to someone else. Asanee Suwan, in the tradition of Hollywood male stars who are often of average height or less, must stand eight inches shorter than she does.
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BEAUTIFUL BOXER is a film of interest to many: to followers of the Nong Toom Story here, in Southeast Asia, and around the World; to fans of Muay Thai Boxing (although I found the fights obviously choreographed and unconvincing; and to those committed to the study of gender issues.
Media coverage, and Evangelical Christian outrage about the subject, in the form of the same-sex marriage controversy, often crowds the "war against terror" and global warming out of our consciousness.
Think about that, too.
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*UPDATE: August 31, 2005 -- See Stephen Murray's comment here, which solves the mystery of who was BEAUTIFUL BOXER's Cinemtographer. And be sure to read his excellent review, which presents an argument for the movie.
Based on the true story of Thailand's famed transgendered kickboxer, Beautiful Boxer is a poignant action drama that punches straight into the heart a...More at HotMovieSale.com
Biographical Feature DVD - Inspired by a true story, this drama from Thailand tells the story of Nong Toom (Asanee Suwan), who was born in a small com...More at Barnes and Noble
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