Sayew

This debut by two youngish directors uses the clichés of soap opera to explore adolescent sexual confusion and the historical moment in the early 1990s when an entire sector of the Thai yellow press went into eclipse. Tomboy student Tao (Pimpaporn) supports her studies by writing for her uncle's racy magazine 'Sayew' ('Tickle'), but faces the sack unless she can sex up her prose to help fend off the challenge from glossy 'adult' photo mags. She tries writing fantasies based on her neighbours, and then (on the advice of an ancient agony uncle) starts reaching for first-hand experience to draw on. The sex-farce elements are as crass as you'd expect, but the film hits a viable balance between caricature and satire in its double-edged 'tribute' to yesterday's porn. Without belabouring the political context, the directors have set the film just before the 1992 'Black May' incident, in which the army violently attacked pro-democracy demonstrators: a time of economic difficulty when, they note, 'everybody suffered stress'.