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From
the Nation
Canada takes its
‘1st Bite’
Published
on Jun 23, 2005
A
Montreal director prowls Thailand with a multinational cast making a
spooky romance film
Part
black comedy, part voodoo ghost story, ‘1st Bite’
is a full-course fantasia of sex, love, life and death,” says
the website devoted to the first Canadian film made in Thailand, which
just ended a three-month shoot with a Thai, Canadian and Indian cast.
The
movie is a mixture of Dracula gore and more common gourmet fare,
judging from a chat with its director, Malaysian-born Montrealer Hunt
Hoe, during a shoot at a Ratchaburi temple.
“1st
Bite” is about Gus, who works in a
Montreal
restaurant and
comes to Bangkok to learn Thai cooking. He meets Lek, a mysterious girl
played by Napakpapha “Mamee” Nakprasitte, who lives
in an island cave and whips up all kinds of exotic dishes for him.
Between
his karaoke sessions and full-moon parties, Gus has a lot of fun, but
then he begins to have eerie experiences, not least of which involves
waking up on the beach and being helped by an Indian guru who heads the
Institute for Enlightenment and Empowerment.
Back
in Montreal, Gus falls in love
with a Canadian girl, but the Thai sorceress refuses to let him go.
“It’s
not a linear, realistic tale like my earlier films,” said
Hunt, referring to “Foreign Ghosts” and
“Seducing Maarya”, which dealt with issues that
Asian immigrants face in the West.
“Seducing
Maarya” was screened at the 2000 Bangkok Film Festival, after
a small furore because the print arrived late, and created a shockwave
in India because it features a
gay husband whose wife has an affair with his father.
Hunt
screened his documentary about Asian men, “Who is Albert
Woo?”, at the 2001 Bangkok festival, and his regular trips
here blossomed into a script, the director discovering that many of the
myths he’d grown up with in Malaysia existed here as well.
“I
got the puppet master [and National Artist] Suchart Sapsin to weave
together the myths into a shadow-puppet show for my film, and the Thai
crew all recognised the stories,” he said with amazement.
He
took a long time to find his Thai star, at one point lining up a
talented but temperamental actress, only to drop her when she
didn’t turn up for an audition.
Mamee
came through Pasaree “Noi” Panya, who’s
worked with big names like Sean Penn and Mel Gibson.
“I
saw a jeans ad of Mamee’s, and I must admit I was not
impressed by her cutsie looks – that was not what I wanted
– but she went through an amazing transformation during the
auditions.
“Mamee
may not know much English, but she knows cinema and she knows the
camera loves her. She loves acting, and has a lot of stuff in
her!”
Known
for his films’ sex sequences, Hunt admitted there are erotic
love scenes in “1st Bite”, but no nudity.
For
the role of the new-age guru, Hunt wanted a Thai actor, “but
it was difficult to get someone who could recite the lines with power
and intuition”.
That’s
why he chose Indian actor Mohan Agashe, who played the father-in-law in
“Seducing Maarya”.
In
the temple sequences in Ratchaburi, Agashe masterfully mouthed his
“textbook lines” about dhamma opposite
French-Canadian actor David Le Haye.
“We
Hindus are familiar with the Buddhist dhamma concept of
karma,” Agashe said later, “so I enjoyed this small
but interesting role.”
Agashe,
a noted stage and screen actor in
India,
was a jury member at
The Nation’s World Film Festival in 2003.
Le
Hay said playing Gus was “a very unique role for me, not just
because of the Asian theme, but because it’s my first trip to
Asia. It’s an
amazing experience.
“In
many ways I think Canadians can relate to Thais because we are both
down-to-earth people who are open to different cultures.”
Le
Hay’s last movie, “Soft Shell Man”, was
shown at the Sundance Festival.
Art
director Xavier George has built the sets for more than 150 Canadian
films, but had never been to
Asia
before, and
couldn’t stop raving about the Thai crew.
“They’ve
worked with
Hollywood
films and know
their job very well,” he said, singling out Pusana
Ongchaisak, who previously served on “Anna and the
King” in Malaysia and HBO’s “Bright
Shining Light” here.
Chief
photographer Simon Weiss is a regular visitor to Southeast Asia,
recently
shooting a muay thai sequence for a National Geographic Channel
martial-arts programme.
Hunt
expects to finish the
Montreal
shoot for
“1st Bite” within a month and release the film by
the end of the year. He’d like it to be seen in Thailand, but
confessed that “an Asian release is always dicey because of
video piracy”.
That
certainly must have hit home when he saw DVD tapes of
“Seducing Maarya” on sale at
Bangkok’s
Mah Boon
Krong mall. Its eerie nature would appeal to Thai audiences, but they
may have to be content with any residual benefits its success earns for
tsunami-struck Phang Na and Koh Lanta, where other sequences were shot.
They’ll
also be hoping for better results for the talented Mamee following her
earlier outing in the ill-received “Butterfly Man”.
Lekha
J Shankar
Special
to The Nation
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