Tears of a Black Tiger

A bizarre, not to mention near-blinding mixture of spaghetti western, Bollywood musical, Hong Kong actioner, Douglas Sirk melodrama, 1950’s Doris Day outing and whatever you’re having yourself – all played out against more pink backdrops than you’d find at a gay Barbie-doll convention – this Thai surprise arthouse hit is nothing if not a genuine oddity.

Rumpoey (Malucchi) stands in a sala (a Thai boathouse) waiting for her beloved Dum (Ngsamsan) so that they might elope, as she is too high-born to marry him with her father’s blessing. He arrives too late, as he gets sidelined by his current duties working for local gangster Fai (Medhanee) - indeed, so effective is Dum at this line of work that his exploits have earned him the nickname ‘The Black Tiger’.

Many wavy lines and tacky flashbacks later, we learn that Rumpoey and Dum first met as children: she the daughter of a regional governor, he the son of a lowly peasant. He takes her on a boat ride and earns a scar while defending her when they’re beset by ridiculous lisping local louts – he then saves her life, and earns a beating for his troubles for fraternising above his status.

Later, however, the pair are reunited when they meet as students in the city. She promises to marry him regardless of her father’s wishes – however, when Dum’s father is murdered, he finds himself becoming involved with underworld cowboy types and becoming a blood-brother with the pencil-mostachioed Mahesuan (Kitsuwon). While all this homoerotic bonding is going on, Rumpoey finds herself promised to the zealous young policeman Kumjorn, and so our lovers would appear to be well and truly star-crossed.

Violent, ridiculous and mawkish in equal measure (sample line: “I don’t know music but it sounds like someone’s got a broken heart”), Tears Of The Black Tiger is a wholly original and knowing affair which borrows heavily from the iconography of the 1950s, and indeed from every B-movie genre ever to make it to the big screen. The result verges on the sublime: all heightened style and histrionics, with a Technicolor overkill of pink and turquoise which should be enough to alert one to the high-kitsch nature of the material on offer.

Possibly the most shallow, and without any doubt the most pink movie ever made, Tears Of The Black Tiger deserves rich reward.