Bangkok Nites

"Women in our family we've always been poor. Aunts raise mothers and mothers turn tricks to raise their kids. That's how mothers meet fathers. Us girls are happy until we turn 16. Then we move to Bangkok. We work to support mothers, aunts and siblings. People hate women who chose this work. I always wish it was different. I want to feel my mother's love and my aunts'. I wanted my father to love me."

I think that about sums it up for Luck and most women like her, which looks like a lot of girls and women in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and other EA countries. Several Japanese men in this movie call it a paradise. Maybe for them and maybe for a little while. The fall from grace is just around the corner for them as well. These are not rich men. They are rich men only by poor Thai standards. And the tricks they turn to make money can always backfire. The promiscuity leeches into everything. There's copious amounts of drugs, backstabbing, get rich quick schemes, all sorts of crimes that are not shown but you can only imagine. And some of them treat these women and the Thais like they own them. Others leech off them cause they're incapable of something else. Ozawa just goes with the flow but he's clearly useless. I wonder what the ending means cause I'm not sure. Whether Ozawa is now supporting Luck who went back to her village or it's just temporary. I really wanted something good for Luck, a ray of sunshine, but I guess maybe reality is much more complicated than the movies and this movies aspires to immerse us into the reality of these people. I'm surprised at this co-production, as it doesn't necessarily paint either country in a good light, and also drug trafficking is heavily prosecuted in Thailand, but it seems like drug use is so commonplace.

Anyway, it was not what I expected at all, and I was annoyed with it for a while. I was expecting and wishing for something more vibey, and it wasn't that. The Bangkok sky is beautiful but living under it is no picnic. It also shows the geography of the country, both the nice and the poor parts, the mythology, the beliefs, there's even some magical realism at some point. Really should be seen on a wider scale, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen and the length is not helping. It's a little too long, even by Japanese standards. The director also co-wrote it and starred in it. Talk about ambitious.