Ekachai Uekrongtham's 2003 biopic of Parinya Charoenphol/Nong Toom a transgendered Thai boy who became a Muaythai champion (kick-)boxer in order to finance a sex-change operation was a big hit in Thailand in on the international film festival circuit before making it to North American screens earlier this year, and on DVD this month. Although in many ways following the genre conventions of an underdog sports movie, it includes breathtakingly beautiful vistas of the northern Thai country side and a lot of strikingly choreographed training and fight scenes.

The two boys and young man who portray Nong Toom are all excellent in showing a quiet, demure lad who wants to be a beautiful woman—not particularly like his mother, though Orn-Anong Panyawong who played his mother was a Miss Thailand. She works hard as Nong's initial earnings underwrite the family acquiring and working a lychee farm. It is a dancer at a temple fair whom the 5-year-old "crybaby" want to grow up to be.

It is Nong's conventionally masculine brother who aspires to become a boxer, but Pi Chart, a trainer whose income derives from working in a Chiang Mai hotel's laundry room Sorapong Chatree, sees the potential in Nong's kick and takes him on. Nong is shy with the other boys, feeling he is a girl and should not be bathing with them. He prefers to help in the kitchen. Pi Moo (the trainer's wife) is very sympathetic to him (and impressed by his vegetable-chopping skills) and to his feminine interests (makeup in particular).

Pi Chart realizes that encouraging rather than suppressing Nong Toom's feminine makeup will get attention that even the best boxing technique will not draw.

Nong Toom develops into a very good boxer. To me it looks like he doesn't have much punch or doesn't much like to punch. But (s/)he has a devastating kick and a lethal maneuver of climbing up the opponent's body to deliver a knockout blow with both fists from above (I'm sure there is a Muaythai label for the move, but I don't know what it is). The 18-19-year-old Nong Toom is played by a real-life Muaythai champion, Asanee Suwan, who is also exceptionally convincing as the shy demure, lady-boy. In the ring, (s)he fights like a man. On the way to the big fight in a Bangkok stadium, Nong Toom knocks out 18 opponents in 22 matches (and wins all the other ones).

He tells the western reporter to whom he relates his life history, that the more makeup he wore, the harder the opponents kicked, and the harder (s)he kicked back.

Having reached the top of the profession and amassing enough money (after a grotesque match with a female wrestler in Tokyo, Inoue Kyoko playing herself), Nong Toom becomes a she, happy about that if very much alone (Pi Chart dies of lung cancer seemingly during the Bangkok match, and his best friend betrayed Nong Toom earlier. The brother drops from sight early one.) If s/he has a sexual orientation, there is barely a hint in the movie about it (the exception is what may be saleswomanship flirting selling a carved elephant to a western backpacker). The gender correction (aligning body with self-identity) is what Nong Toom wanted and got. In Thai conception, being a transvestite (kathoey) is karma, and so is being a woman trapped in a man's (a boxer's even) body, though modern technology (transsexual surgery) makes it possible to resolve that particular discord. Others do what they want to do or are fated to do in the Thai view, so psychological analysis is not a particular Thai concern or specialty.

The telling an alien reporter (Kegan Kang) the life story is a bit klunky a device, and the success through merciless training (and a mentor's belief in a prospect unobvious initially to others) is very familiar from many sports (and dance) movies. Even a sensitive soul boxing to earn money for the family is familiar (Humoresque). Having won one Oscar playing a transgendered victim, since "Beautiful Boxer" was made, Hilary Swank has won another playing a determined boxer. In a sense "Beautiful Boxer" blends the two (with another natal/chromosomal sex).

I have found transgendered characters in Anglophone movies unconvincing/obvious. I didn't believe for a moment that Hilary Swank could pass for a boy in "Boys Don't Cry" or that Karen Black had been a man in "Come Back to the Five and Dime" or that Jaye Davidson in "The Crying Game" was a woman, let alone Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie" or Jack Lemmon in "Some Like It Hot" (I could almost believe in Tony Curtis in that!). Asanee Suwan in transition is far less attractive a woman than a man, but in the post-operative part of the movie is convincing (though it still seems a waste of all that ab-hardening, etc....).

Asanee Suwan had not acted before and, as far as I can tell, has not undertaken any other acting roles (similarly, Steve Bell, the champion bare-knuckle boxer who played a gay young man in "Like It Is," has not played any other roles). He delivers a great performance as the transsexual boxer. The cinematography of Choochart Nantitanyatada also deserves to be singled out for its excellence, in the training fight scenes, in the northern Thai countryside, and the neon-filled capital cities (Tokyo as well as Bangkok).

I have a Thai DVD of the movie. The just-released American, TLA, one includes a featurette, a music video, two trailer, a featurette "Inside 'Beautiful Boxer,'" and extra fight footage.

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I have reviewed two books that show the developing Thai conceptual separation of gender and sexuality (with homogender homosexuality becoming more prominent but not eliminating heterogender homosexuality): Dear Uncle Go and The Dove Coos (I and II) and the murky homoeroticsm of the also delayed Thai movie Tropical Malady that is in current limited release.

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This review is dedicated to my long-time epinions pal Ed Grover, who has been encouraging me to write about sex and gender differences around the world since welcoming my arrival on the site five-plus years ago. The estimable Eplovejoy has organized a write-off in Ed's honor. See http://www.epinions.com/content_4498563204 for links to other reviews and tributes.




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD