Well Deserved Praise

hyped garbage

Fantastic!

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

JAN DARA is one of those rare films that succeeds on many levels: the story as adapted from a famous Thai novel 'The Story of Jan Dara' by Utsana Phleungtham is one of intrigue and exploration of lust, revenge, and thwarted passion; the cinematography by Nattawut Kittikhun is incredibly atmospheric while at the same time pausing for some of the most beautiful studies of nature on film; the musical score by Chartchai Pongprapapan and Pakawat Waiwitaya mixes the exotic pentatonic Oriental melodies with quaint excerpts from early recordings of Richard Strauss and Puccini operas; the direction by Nonzee Nimibutr is so sensuously elegant that this film firmly establishes him as an important figure in international film-making.Simply stated, the story is about Jan Dara, the son of a woman who died giving birth to him, his life as an abused and unwanted child in the house of his 'father' spent searching for the love of his lost mother, his first encounters with passion and love, his adaptation to the realities of surviving in a family fraught with conflicts and bizarrely tangled interrelationships, and the disillusionment that comes with the discovery of his true family history and how the way his life comes full circle. It is a period piece and includes the outside effects of WW II in an otherwise sequestered house of strange isolation.While JAN DARA includes many sensuous scenes (the 'first memory' of Jan Dara is watching his 'father' in an indiscretion with his beloved aunt), these scenes are photographed so sensitively that they become studies like Kama Sutra paintings rather than being vulgar. The story makes many flashbacks and flash-forwards and keeping the various actors at the different ages of these sequences straight can be problematic. The cast is uniformly excellent and credible, even when they may be too evil to watch! Here is an example of Oriental films that don't rely on choreographic martial arts to sustain interest. In that way it is similar to the beautiful SPRING, SUMER, AUTUMN, WINTER, SPRING, and for those who enjoy the subtle arts of Asia this film is a must. Highly recommended. Grady Harp

the plot is messed up, like everyone is immoral and all...i watched this twice and it still disturbs me the way everyone is like, all obsessed with sex and desires... I guess the worst part of all was the end...where no one knows who Jan Dara's father is...because her mother was kidnapped and rapped...and this is where the entire story mixed with love and hatred begins! She got home alive and pregnant, and her family didn't want others to know about it, so they forced her to marry this rich man, who turns out to be Jan's uncle/ stepfather--the man who keeps torturing Jan. His mom died, and the uncle married his aunt (her mom's younger sister) instead. His aunt was always really and genuinely nice to Jan. Jan's aunt and the uncle gave birth to a daughter--a super annoying bitch. One day the uncle hooked up with another woman (Christy Chung) and she moved in officially. The uncle slept with her daughter and the obnoxious daughter got pregnant with her dad's (the uncle's) baby!! NOW IT GETS REALLY MESSED UP! Her dad, aka the Uncle, became impotent ever since. Then he made her daughter marry Jan--they hated each other, but it was chiefly a torture for the daughter because she'd always been a lesbian. Jan slept with Christy, his uncle's mistress, and the uncle saw them...he died (I think) of stroke then. On the other hand, Jan hated the daughter so much he raped her, and strangely, he also becomes impotent ever since. OK--the WEIRDEST part! Remember that Jan's wife (the obnoxious daughter) is a lesbian?!! Jan bumped into Christy sleeping with her!! Luckily, the wonderfully nice aunt decided to leave the crazy household to become a nun.

This film was very controversial when it was released in Hong Kong. Not only was it the first movie which Christy Chung's (who is very famous in Hong Kong) first erotic film, it also supposedly starred a 15 year old teenage man. Later the age issue was cleared up and the guy was actually 17 when he made the film.Anyway, back to the film. It was a story which had a bit of everything. Family tension, love, aggressiveness, revenge, rape, hatred. This is not just erotica, but in fact a tragic story of a man's childhood. I thought the acting was good. The father's anger, the sister's aggressiveness were portrayed beautifully. The scene when Jan Dara rubbed onto the Night Mistress' breast was hilarious!If you are not disturbed by the complicated sexual relationships in the film then this movie is enjoyable. It gives the audience something to think about, especially raising the awareness of the public towards the rape victims.

I had really been looking forward to seeing this film. I had seen several enthusiastic reviews of it, and I had never, as far as I can recall, seen a Thai film before. I even made a wok of Pad Thai to eat while watching it.However, what I got was this confusing little stinker. The main character is a young man who lives in what appears to be a family compound, with includes several large houses. The family members apparently move from one of these houses to another, or from one room to another, for no apparent reason. Most of these members, along with some acquaintances, are a group of attractive women who resemble each other quite a bit, and spend most of their time listlessly having sex with the male characters, or, at least once, each other. Even a World War II air raid doesn't stop them.Neither the male nor the female characters seem to have much else to do, except for the protagonist's father, whose main interest in life appears to be abusing his son.The sex scenes seem to have been filmed by an experienced soft-core pornographer – plenty of backs and thighs, with the just the occasional breast, nothing else. Nothing much here, or in the rest of the action as well, to hold one's interest, once one stops trying to figure out who is doing what to whom.Furthermore, the Pad Thai didn't turn out too well. The author of the cookbook said that, in place of the fresh shrimp, chicken and pork usually used in the West, it would be more authentic to use dried shrimp and very firm tofu, both of which turned out, for my taste, anyway, to be too chewy and somewhat unpleasant. Next time I make Pad Thai, I won't try to be so authentic.Oh, well, perhaps if I had read the original novel, or could have understood the Thai dialog, the film might have seemed less confusing and more interesting.