Film: Soi Cowboy
Release date: 19th April 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 112 mins
Director: Thomas Clay
Starring: Nicolas Bro, Pimwalee Thampanyasan, Petch Mekoh, Natee Srimanta, Somluk Kuamsing
Genre: Drama
Studio: Network
Format: DVD
Country: Thailand/UK
We’re all aware from countless documentaries of the booming trade in Asian brides for western men, and of the terrible social injustices incurred on the part of the women involved. In Soi Cowboy, British director Thomas Clay explores the very human aspect of a couple living out the day-to-day reality of this dubious phenomenon, and its ultimate cost in human life.
Toby (Nicolas Bro) is a Norwegian man living in Thailand. He is well paid with a good job, but physically unattractive by any standards, socially awkward, emotionally impotent and underdeveloped. He is engaged to the naïve, child-like Koi (Pimwalee Thampanyasan) - a young, beautiful Thai woman who is pregnant (we assume with his child, although this is never confirmed).
The film exposes Toby and Koi’s relationship through slices of their everyday life, highlighting the grim reality of two people sandwiched together in a relationship based on little but convenience.
In the final third of the film, the story jumps to Koi’s brother Cha (Petch Mekoh), and through him we learn more about the circumstances which have led her to the life of a Thai bride, and also what seedy part he has to play in his sister’s predicament...
Nicolas Bro as Toby makes for one of the most cringe-worthy anti-heroes of recent times. With his hangdog face, greasy hair and voluminous t-shirts, he fumbles his way through shop transactions in hopelessly pidgin Thai, wanders the streets aimlessly buying pirated DVDs at street vendors, and looks generally out of step with his environment. There’s a Lost In Translation vibe to the whole thing, but Toby makes for a far less suave protagonist than Bill Murray. Whereas Tokyo felt like a surreal playhouse through Murray’s knowing eyes, the Bangkok of Soi Cowboy feels alienating and unwelcoming when seen through inept, bumbling Toby.
Koi looks equally lost and ill at ease with her fiancé and drab everyday existence, and as the film develops through tiny glimpses of the mundane, you realise just how little these two people really know about each other, and what a flimsy basis for a marriage this is. Utterly devoid of any kind of common interests or genuine attraction, we see Toby day-to-day buying his wife’s affections: a bracelet for a kiss, a toy elephant for a cuddle… He views her like an immature teenager, overwhelmed and in awe of her beauty and incapable of any real communication. Koi openly defines their relationship in terms of its monetary value, and offhandedly discusses it with her friends and family in strictly business terms. It’s to this end that when we glimpse a moment of genuine affection between them it profoundly lights up the screen, but is sadly all too brief, and all too fleeting, and it’s not long before the grim reality of things catches up with them, and us.
It’s all quite heavy stuff, and it’s one of Soi Cowboy’s great strengths that a healthy vein of humour runs through the proceedings. In one delightful sequence, Toby sits tapping at his laptop and picking his nose while Koi sweeps the floor with a dustpan and brush, all to a soundtrack of classical music. It plays out like the most painfully boring ballet in the world, building to an overwhelmingly dull crescendo, as Toby becomes so irritated with his wife that he can’t bear to stay in the same room as her and leaves. It’s scenes like this - playing on Kubrick references like 2001:A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange – that really raise the film to a new level. Director Thomas Clay really knows how to root out the humour in the bland and the monotonous, and it’s a testament to Soi Cowboy’s assuredness in its own voice that scenes where almost nothing happens often prove be laugh-out-loud funny.
The monotony of everyday life is examined by a patient, static camera – almost painfully immobile at times – and filmed in flat black-and-white, which feels like we’re watching events unfold through CCTV cameras. It’s voyeuristic; sometimes uncomfortable in the excruciating details we’re privy to, yet occasionally that stationary camera can’t help but creep to life, and moves to explore its surroundings - mirroring our own curiosity. It’s another mark of Soi Cowboy’s faith in itself that for the final devastating act, it abruptly abandons the static, passionless world it has inhabited for the past two hours and suddenly bursts into colour and a handheld camera to show an altogether different – and quite unexpected - side of Thailand. From this point on, you can forget what you thought you knew about Soi Cowboy - it reveals itself to have a very dark heart indeed.
Soi Cowboy is a film of small themes and small ideas, speaking in a language of monotony and minutiae. It is a small film, but also an exceptional one. Funny, insightful, inventive, well scripted and well acted, full of surprises, and as well made a drama as you are likely to see this year. LB
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