Love of Siam in Greek

Love of Siam: My Review

(Originally Posted on my FB Notes on September 11, 2011)

Here is a summary of the movie from one of its reviewers on the net:

The Love of Siam 

(Chukiat Sakveerakul, 2007)

Thai Title: Rak haeng Siam

http://oggsmoggs.blogspot.com/2008/04/love-of-siam-2007.html

To label Chukiat Sakveerakul’s The Love of Siam as simply a gay teen romance is to misjudge its power and intention. Within the two and a half hour running time (the director’s cut is reportedly four hours long) of the film, Sakveerakul essays not only the two young leads’ reunion and inevitable attraction but also a family’s slow and painful road to accepting a long-delayed reality. I would like to think thatThe Love of Siam, above everything else, seeks to reaffirm the life-affirming values of loving and being loved without sacrificing the portrayal of the very palpable pain that usually accompanies the emotion.

The twenty-minute prologue tracks the histories of young Mew (Arthit Niyomkul) and Tong (Jirayu La-ongmanee), who are both schoolmates and neighbors. They form a very close friendship which was abruptly ended when Tong’s family had to move out when Tang (Laila Boonyasuk), Tong’s elder sister, went missing during a trip in Chiang Mai, causing the family tremendous and irreparable sorrow. Years later, Mew (Witwisit Hirunwongkul), lead singer and composer for an up and coming boy band, again crosses path with Tong (Mario Maurer), who is struggling at home with his domineering mother (Sinjai Plengpanich) and alcoholic father (Songsit Rungnopakunsri). The two reconnect and inevitably fall for each other, disrupting whatever peace they have grown accustomed to.

To make matters more complicated, Mew’s Chinese neighbor Ying (Kanya Rattanapetch) is hopelessly in love with Mew, not knowing of his homosexual tendencies. On the other hand, Tong is currently dating Donut (Aticha Pongsilpipat), presumably not knowing of his own homosexual tendencies too. Tong’s family, more specifically the father who’s been spending days and nights drinking, is still suffering from the loss of Tang. June (also played by Boonyasuk), Mew’s band manager who looks a lot like Tang, is then recruited to pose as the long lost daughter, momentarily easing the father of his staggered pains.

The Siam in the title refers to Siam Square, a shopping district in Bangkok where most teens hang out to shop, dine, meet, and have fun. Siam Square, in the eyes of the Bangkok youth, has become both the place for welcomes and farewells, of declarations of love and hurtful break-ups, of chance encounters and scheduled meetings. In the film, the popular venue is not only the setting for Mew and Tong’s reunion and the numerous other events in the story but it also represents the unpredictability of the many facets of love which the film so intricately paints. While Siam Square or any other shopping mecca are ordinarily thought of as accessories to the bastardization of love and romance because it commonly equates blatant commercialism with the love’s outward depictions like dating, gift-giving, and hanging out, The Love of Siam uses that very element to depict love’s many wanderings and permutations. Underneath the glow of the traditionally amiable romance, The Love of Siam strives to say something more about the act of loving, whether romantically or familial: that it is more a nebulous network-like journey to maintain hope than a straight path to the assumed happy ending.

In fact, The Love of Siam ends without any of its characters fulfilling the traditional conclusions of a love story. There are no happily-ever-afters or expected closures. Instead, the film ends with a mere spark of hope. That hope that closes the film actually opens up million of possibilities for its characters, as numerous as the countless fortuitous encounters in Siam Square that initiate relationships between strangers or abruptly conclude long-standing affairs all within the fateful movement of time. Sakveerakul drafts a bittersweet ode to the complexities of loving, which commercial cinema has tended to avoid throughout the years. What he exclaims in The Love of Siam is that daringly traversing outside the common simplicities of love is far more gratifying than safely assuming formula.

Through the interconnected lives of two boys who are on the verge of self-awareness amidst their own individual conflicts and the people surrounding them, Sakveerakul notes that love survives notwithstanding the dilemmas that pervade the world. As Ying translates from a Chinese song, “as long as there is love, there is hope.” Corny as it sounds, the Bangkok of The Love of Siam thrives on that noble aspiration, without knowing that it does so.

My Review: Love of Siam in Greek

Love of Siam is one of the very few movies that would encompass the major terms of love as defined by Ancient Greece.   I think that if anyone could use the four terms in weaving together a movie or story, without any boring moment in it (all other technical aspects included), then it would certainly be at the highest ranks in my prejudice for great movies.

I shall be discussing how the four love terms were used in the movie.

Agape

Agape or unconditional love is the theme of the movie.  Tong’s family had a close relationship with God.  Mew has strong ties with people he cares for the most.

This kind of love may not have been emphasized much but in the end, agape had proved that as long as you still have love, there is hope.

Storge

The natural affection of parents for their children and vice versa is storge.  In the movie, this is portrayed by Tong’s relationship with his parents as well as Mew’s relationship with his grandmother.  In both instances, storge has never been successful in their families.  Mew lost his grandmother at an early age and he seemed to have never got the chance to fully reunite with his family.  Tong lost his sister at an early age and since then, his family has been in constant grief making it impossible for each of them to move on.

Reality gripped the characters of the movie and the idea that they cling on to the possibility of separation has plagued them with the impossibility of letting go.  Storge is both a problem and a solution.  The only thing that would solve their problem is if the family becomes more open to each other and show more storge to each other.  On the part of Mew, diversionary tactics would solve his problem of letting go and loneliness.

Phileo

The love between and among friends is phileo.  Early in the movie, Mew and Tong were connected by strong brotherly love they had for each other.  It kept both of them moving on.  This would have been the perfect remedy for them to let go, but the moving of Tong’s family to another place seemed to have hampered the possibility of them to easily let go of people that had been separated from them.

Eventually, both Mew and Tong were able to find other friends with whom they shared phileo.  Mew had his band while Tong had his circle of friends.  Coming into their lives were Ying and Donut who also were able to give them phileo.  More dominant of the two is Ying’s phileo for Mew.  It kept Ying hoping while Mew found a friend.

But the strongest display of phileo in the movie was Aex’s understanding of Mew.  Aex had accepted that he will never understand Mew but he will still be there for Mew as his best friend no matter what.

Eros

Eros is passionate love.  It may also mean simple platonic love.  The movie has elevated this to Mew’s love for Tong.  Eros seemed to have separated the two from their other lives but it had helped them hope for a tomorrow.  The love they had was as passionate as that of a simple kiss and hugs, and as platonic as that of simple exchange of words showing how much they love each other for who they are.

Eventually, the fact that this love did not become successful in the end made the movie a great tear-jerker.  Still, platonic love was existent between the two.  They know they still love each other but love is not just eros.

The movie purposely made all of these loves to fail to show us that sometimes we could not attain everything in life.  But I like the way that the movie showed that when eros fails, there is phileo; when phileo fails, there is storge; when storge fails, there is agape.

The movie was absolutely great.  I cannot get over the lines and the song.  They are worth quoting and remembering.  What struck me the most is that it has shown me that there is no such thing as too much love.  You may get too much love for someone and you try to escape from it, but in the end you end up running back to the love you had lost.  That I think is the ultimate message of the movie.