By Meina Banh
Famed Thai boxer, Nong Toom, endures heartbreaks, triumphs of life and transgender identity in “Beautiful Boxer” screened at this year's UCLA Thai Film Festival.
The film opens with a jarring contrast of a bonafied decked out woman and a rough and tough boxer. Images of painted red nails against wrapped bandages, sassy black fish nets stockings against bright red boxing gloves, or so it seems. Perhaps this movie is a forbidden love story between a dare devil boxer and a pampered rich girl. However, that circumspection only lasts until the opening credits when Beautiful Boxer flashes across the screen. In actuality, the movie is an action drama based on the true story of Thai boxer, Parinya "Nong Toom" Charoenpol and his life long battle as a transgender individual.
As it is generally known, Thailand has often been a country associated with sex trade, promiscuity, and the proliferation of homosexuality and transgender identity. Somehow, these supposed truisms have become cultural stereotypes and projected on a global level, so when a movie like Beautiful Boxer comes about, it's difficult to maintain the line between artistry and playing into stereotypes. Let's face it, who isn't tired of the trite and banal portrayals of a woman who feels like he's stuck in a man's body? I am, and the cheap laughs I got out of them were just that - cheap. So what makes Beautiful Boxer different from the tiresome over exploited projections? Since Beautiful Boxer is based on a true story, there is an element of personal depth, which makes the film stand out as a unique entity.
The story is pretty straight forward as it follows Parinya, played by Asanee Suwan, from his poor childhood in a family home living on the borders of poverty in Northern Thailand where he first became fascinated with femininity while attending a temple fair with traditional dressed up dancers. From then on, Parinya began his forbidden tango with red lipstick. At one point, Nong Toom's family even tries to help him conquer his inner demons by sending him off to a pilgrimage with a Buddhist monk. However, Parinya's search for inner serenity and self-control ends, as his love for lip gloss takes him over. Instead, Parinya bounces between his secret life and public, more acceptable masculine life. He only begins to "fight like a man to become a woman" (the tag line) when he enters the boxing ring in another temple fair, and on a fluke, wins the match. Exhilarated with the feeling of actually standing up for himself, Nong Toom enrolls in boxing school. Influences and pressures aside, Parinya learns to take on his more feminized self and transform into a woman/man boxer. The sport is merely used as a stepping-stone to finance his sex change operation.
The ironic dichotomy of boxing as a violent sport and Nong Toom's femininity are crucial to the plot. The brutal combat becomes a sort of ballet dance between him and his opponent. The true aesthetics and beauty of the sport becomes apparent as Parinya defeats his opponents and wins respect. But the film is far from embodying pure melodrama. Even while being jilted by the public and his fellow boxers, Nong Toom was able to use his best weapon (aside from his quick left jab) against his aggressors, and that is his humor, which is illustrated in witty and light hearted moments. The quaint scenes between Parinya and his trainer, however, exposes the protagonist's strongest moments of courage and sympathy.
Director Ekachai Uekrongtham, reputed for portraying marginalized characters, actually liberates his characters in Beautiful Boxer, ingeniously juxtaposing the blood sport of boxing with the even more excruciating inner fears of transgender identity. Audience members enjoy a dose of humanity, but not at the expense of played out stereotypes. Gay pride can only be a by-product of Nong Toom's life story, not its primary aim.
www.beautifulboxer.com
Published: Friday, June 25, 2004
