17/05/2008

The Un certain regard section at the Cannes Film Festival presented the unusual Thai/UK co-production Soi Cowboy [+see also:
trailer
film profile] on Friday. The film is the second feature of the young British director Thomas Clay, whose debut The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael was one of the discoveries of the Critics’ Week in 2005.

Soi Cowboy was written in several days by Clay, after having lived in Thailand for almost a year. For his portly European protagonist, who in some ways is the director’s alter ego, Clay chose to work with fearless Danish actor Nicolas Bro (Christoffer Boe’s Offscreen [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).

Bro plays a filmmaker who lives in Thailand with his pregnant local girlfriend (Pimwalee Thampanyasan, equally fearless), a girl he saved from a life of prostitution. But are the two of them really equals in this relationship, or has he simply become her default client? And what are her siblings up to?

The film is split in two loosely connected parts, the first in mostly stationary shots in black and white and the second in handheld colour. The ways in which both parts need one another to form a whole is part of the film’s mystery, with Asian genre elements added into the mix for good measure after what feels like a decidedly European first half.

Soi Cowboy (the title is a reference to a Thai red light district) was produced by Pull Back Camera Ltd, the director’s company, and Thai production outfit De Warrenne Pictures Co. Ltd. It is sold internationally by Paris-based Coproduction Office.