Bangkok Girl

This is an intriguing and very moving film, the credit for which goes entirely to Pla; the Bangkok bar girl whose story it purports to tell. You can watch it here Bangkok Girl

Pla speaks directly to the camera and whilst generally making light of her predicament, she comes across as lost and vulnerable. Then she flashes a million volt smile and it is impossible to stop your heart going out to her. At 19 she claims to have worked in bars for nearly a third of her life although, she says, she does not have sex with customers.There are a few twists in the tale and I won't reveal them here. Suffice to say that this is worth watching for the insight Pla gives to the life of a bar girl.

The film maker's narration is generally well meaning but he falls into the usual trap of quoting boiler plate Bangkok mythology as though it is fact. Virtually all girls who offer sex on the streets are either underage or HIV positive, we are told. There is no basis for such a claim. The annual turnover of the Thai sex industry is quoted with precision alongside the assertion that most of it goes to the mafia and as police bribes. There is no acknowledgement that this can only be a wild guess. Unless of course the mafia has started making submissions to the Thai office of national statistics and the police are putting bribes on their tax returns.

There are plenty of shots of western men with Thai girls and the narrator explains that he has pixelated them to hide identities. I can only hope that none of the men mind being featured because every one of them could easily be identified. The one guy who should have sought to hide his identity was clearly very happy to be on camera. Claiming to be a Bangkok based schoolteacher, he was a gift to a film maker seeking to portray bar goers as vile, drunken scum. 

So few marks for narration or for the performance of the aforementioned moron in the purple shirt, but watch this for Pla and be utterly beguiled.