Gran película "camp" thailandesa.

Gun-Slinging Cowboys in Colorful Thailand By A.O. SCOTT Published: January 12, 2007

There may be crazier movies than "Tears of the Black Tiger," Wisit Sasanatieng's Thai cowboy melodrama of betrayal and forbidden love, but I can't think of one that is quite so mad about its own craziness. What is most startling is not Mr. Sasanatieng's compulsive, fetishistic assembly of bits and pieces of the movie past; this kind of pastiche has, over the past decade and a half, gone from novelty to cliché. The source of the movie's seductive appeal lies less in its vivid fakery — the mock vintage-Technicolor hues, the musical and visual quotations, the miasma of camp hanging in the air — than in its disarming sincerity.

Magnolia Pictures Supakorn Kitsuwon, left, who plays Mahasuan, and Chartchai Ngamsan, as Seua Dum, portray fearsome outlaws in "Tears of the Black Tiger."

I doubt many of the lurid pinks and yellows and washed-out greens that fill the screen are found in nature, but those tears mentioned in the title nonetheless seem perfectly genuine. They spring, rather late in the story, from the eyes of Seua Dum (also briefly known, for unexplained reasons, as Rapin), a peasant's son who grows up into a fearsome, melancholy outlaw (and also, along the way, into a shy, nerdy college student). Chartchai Ngamsan, the actor who plays Dum, may have a limited range of expression, but he uses it to maximum effect. His performance is a series of matinee-idol poses and delicately lighted close-ups, and his face is the principal vehicle for the film's grand, throbbing emotions. Many of Mr. Sasanatieng's images are borrowed from westerns, spaghetti and otherwise, and his unbridled appetite for histrionics serves as a reminder that those oaters were not called horse operas for nothing. But the convolutions of his narrative, which twice leaps backward in time in the vain hope of making sense, may owe more to Chinese sword and martial arts movies than to the frontier epics of John Ford or Sergio Leone. Film scholars will debate whether the bloody faces, exploding heads and flying severed limbs betray the influence of Sam Peckinpah or a source in Asian cinema closer to Mr. Sasanatieng's home. Really, though, the possible antecedents for the movie (which finally arrives on American screens after dazzling critics at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001) lie so thickly on its surface that you almost expect footnotes instead of end credits. You could pause after every scene to track down allusions overt and accidental, and once "Tears of the Black Tiger" is available on DVD, plenty of fans will do just that.

Magnolia Pictures Stella Malucchi plays a woman in the center of a doomed love affair.

Luckily, the movie tosses off its compendium of real and imaginary cinema trivia not with a knowing smirk, but with a swoon. As a boy, Dum falls in love with Rumpoey (Stella Malucchi), the daughter of a local big shot. She bosses and teases him while he fights off bullies and endures cruel punishments on her behalf. His stoical masochism — and the sight of him being whipped by his father — melts her heart. But circumstances and class differences keep them apart, and Dum, only a year after leaving college, becomes the top gun in a gang of bandits led by an angry fellow named Fai (Sombati Medhanee). Meanwhile, Rumpoey carries her metaphorical torch (often through literal rainstorms). Her eyes glassy with resignation, she prepares to marry an ambitious police captain (Arawat Ruangvuth), who volunteers to lead the mission to wipe out Fai's gang. Really, though, the plot summary is both tiring and superfluous. The two lovers rarely smile; the villains have impressive facial hair; and the double-crosses and revelations are accompanied by harmonica and slide guitars filtered through Ennio Morricone, and Thai pop arrangements by Amornbhong Methakunavudh, the music supervisor. The camera takes in all the color with the voracity of a child devouring scoop after scoop of ice cream. Ms. Malucchi, as lovely as the young Elizabeth Taylor, is the still, sad point in the midst of a good deal of hectic violence and half-submerged homoeroticism — a paper doll in a world of flexing action figures. She may be the love of Dum's life, but there is far more heat and intimacy in his relationship with Mahasuan (Supakorn Kitsuwon), the second-best shooter in the Fai gang, who hops from rival to sidekick and back again, his lip curling under his thin, crooked mustache. Back in the old days, the genres that sustain "Tears of the Black Tiger" — weepies and wuxia, as much as westerns — were loaded with psychosexual subtext, implications that Mr. Sasanatieng emphasizes without bringing them to the surface. Sublimation just for the fun of it may not be as interesting — or as much fun — as the kind enforced by social norms or cultural taboos, and the intoxicating madness of "Tears of the Black Tiger" is in the end too willed, too deliberate, to be entirely divine. TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER Opens today, January 12 2007, in Manhattan. (In Thai, with English subtitles) Written and directed by Wisit Sasanatieng; Director of photography, Nattawut Kittikhun; Edited by Dusanee Puinongpho; Music by Amornbhong Methakunavudh; Production designer, Ek Iemchuen; Produced by Nonzee Nimibutr; released by Magnolia Pictures. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 113 minutes. This film is not rated. WITH: Chartchai Ngamsan (Seua Dum, a k a Black Tiger), Stella Malucchi (Rumpoey), Supakorn Kitsuwon (Mahasuan), Arawat Ruangvuth (Police Captain Kumjorn), Sombati Medhanee (Fai) and Pairoj Jaisingha (Phya Prasit). Copyright by The New York Times 2007