OK... here's another look at THE BEACH, this time through a girl's eyes, and this Malaysian lass doesn't seem too sold on Leo's latest...
Father Geek,
Caught the beach last night. As folks Stateside probably know, it's out one week before the US here in South East Asia. I was all real excited about seeing it, as the local papers reviews were great and all. But now I'm not so sure....
The Beach starts off with an okay premise. Leo plays Richard, an American tourist in Bangkok, doing all the usual tourist jaunts in Bangkok with one significant omission (I don't see any nude girls bopping around). No offense to anyone, but one scene shows Leo walking down the streets of Patpong, a shopping/sleaze district in Bangkok. I've been to Patpong 4 times and all the doors of the clubs at street level have always been open, showing nude girls bopping around. You can't miss them.
Okay okay, ratings aside, Leo meets up with 3 people, 2 French tourists and Robert Carlyle, who shows him the map to The Beach and then ...
(Spoilers....don't read if you don't want to know what's happening!)
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.....kills himself in extremely bloody circumstances. Leo, Robert et al are obviously budget travellers, as they live in very shabby budget lodgings. And here I think the cinematography is wonderful, because I've been to places like that, and they've NEVER significantly appeared so .......(I'm searching for the word here).......vivid and alive. The colors are magnified. The peeling paintwork is magnified. Even the mosquito netting looks unreal, good enough to eat.
To cut a long story short,Leo invites the 2 French tourists, Etienne and his girlfriend, the very luscious Virginie Ledoyen, who should have been the muse for Eden's Eve (of Adam), to join him. I particularly liked the character of Etienne, who is as real as the millions of French tourists who ply South East Asia can get, right down to the accent, affectations and all.
(And here, I don't mean it in a disparaging way. Etienne is as real and warm a character can get without overacting in a way that B-grade movie producers like to have French characters do in resistance movies, like exploding in a 'Ah, tres bien, monsieur!' and getting all excitable every 2 minutes.)
They finally find the Beach, where a community of tourists from all nationalities are gathered. And here I think the film scores a high note. All the Beach tourists seem pretty natural. In essence, none of them seem to be acting. They're like tourists you get anywhere in the world, allowing for cultural differences, whom you just meet in a beach resort and catch a glimpse of what they want to portray, but you don't really KNOW them, know what I mean? Kind of like the characters in Short Cuts. No one here overacts or descends into cultural cliches.
The leader of the community is Sal, who has an intense obsession about keeping the Beach secret so as not to turn it into another Patpong or Koh Sa Mui (a neighbouring island well known for its beauty and touristy beach resorts). So Leo et al settles in, but finds that not all is well in the Beach.
I was one of those who were terribly disturbed by Lord of the Flies, that movie where a bunch of schoolboys are shipwrecked on an island; and without adult supervision, set their own savage rules and society. The Beach attempts that premise. What happens to civilization when there are no laws? How would you designate society of which you were sovereign of your own community? But because the people here on the Beach are adults, not schoolboys, the effect is muted somehow, tempered with too much civilization.
In essence, the characters are still playing tourists and rational adults, but ultimately tourists who don't want to be bothered by real life. What was then a boon in the 1st and 2nd act is now impairing the realisation of the 3rd act.
After a great set-up and so much foreboding, when you are left wondering 'What the heck is going to happen to this beach utopia that will horrify me so?', the 3rd act comes as a disappointment. This is unlike The Fight Club, where the 3rd act is truly a shocker. But here, instead of allowing Leo and the Beach community to take care of their own problems ( as did Ed Norton), the solution is passed on to a group of Thai farmers.
The 3rd act left me feeling as though I'd witnessed an episode of Xena, or any other series which now and then offers a storyline where the hero/heroine meets a secret Utopian community. Somehow, I expect of a movie. I don't know. I just wanted MORE. Heck, I expected more, I paid for MORE.
Nevertheless, the soundtrack is going to be one of the best and most aptly disturbing collection you'll hear since the Matrix, especially that All Saints cover. Watch it, and let me know if the realisation of the 3rd act bothers you in the way it bothered me.
Lynette of Malaysia
