E-Mail This Article to a Friend Thai pad Luxury seats at the Bangkok International Film Festival BY GERALD PEARY

Would it be obscene to hold the Bangkok International Film Festival weeks after the Thai coast below the country’s capital had been done in by the tsunami? A decision was made: the show would roll on, January 13 through 24, bankrolled mostly by the Tourism Authority of Thailand. However, the opening-night celebration was cancelled, and profits from the festival were announced as going to tsunami aid. As for the eagerly anticipated appearance of the Princess of Thailand on closing night: she wouldn’t be attending this year, as even she was mourning a relative who had been vacationing by the ocean.

The lavish festival moved ahead, with a thoughtful tribute to cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Frida, 21 Grams, Amores perros, etc.) and mini-retrospectives of French filmmaker Olivier Assayas and our Oliver Stone, the latter a local celebrity for having shot his Alexander extravaganza in the Thai countryside. A "career" award was bestowed on schlock maestro Joel Schumacher (The Lost Boys, Batman Forever, Phone Booth, etc.), who could unveil his dubious achievement The Phantom of the Opera as the closing-night film without fear of chortling: the Thai citizenry are famously kind and polite.

David Hockney, who was pegged to discuss his art-theory videos, was a no-show because, he informed the festival, he couldn’t get a visa to Thailand for his boyfriend. "I told him, David, don’t worry, you can find plenty of boyfriends in Bangkok," a fest organizer confided. Maybe he was put off by the travel time to Thailand? It couldn’t have been worse than mine: with woeful connections, 36 hours from Logan, including a surrealist 3 a.m. switching of planes in Fairbanks, Alaska, where reindeer sausage was on the early-bird breakfast menu.

But what’s to gripe about? I was president of the five-person International Critics Jury for the fest, and probably nowhere on earth is such a jury, assembled by FIPRESCI, the international critics’ organization, treated with such supreme respect. We stayed at a five-star hotel, swam in the pool between screenings, and ate wherever we wished in tasty, spicy Bangkok restaurants. And each of us was given an eager, no-attitude college student to attend to his or her needs. (Oh, the guilty-pleasure allure of neo-colonialism!)

Besides touring sacred Buddhist sites, my jury had ample time to discuss world politics. "Don’t worry: I hate George Bush," I assured them. "I can understand primitive religious people in the world being tricked and manipulated, but why educated Americans?" my Serbian juror inquired about George W. support. Damned if I could answer him. "Do you own a gun?" my Indian juror blurted out one day. "All Americans I see in movies pull out their guns." Nope, no pistol in my pocket back in Cambridge.

Our jury duty was to select the best Southeast Asian film among 15 candidates. We watched three a day, not in a plebian moviehouse but in a plush little theater at the side of a multiplex supplied with lean-back armchairs, blankets, and pillows. On other days, rich Thais and foreigners can pay four times the usual movie price (about $10 instead of $2.50) to see films so decadently.

What’s playing in the regular multiplex? Hollywood reigns, of course. What you get in Bangkok is exactly what you get in Boston: Closer, The Aviator, etc., and a huge blow-up of Hilary Duff at the multiplex escalator. In a lobby area where our jury repaired between films for tea and finger sandwiches, the walls sported silver-tinted ersatz paintings of American studio golden-age stars: Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, etc. Only one indigenous actor was represented. "He’s Mitr Chaibuncha, our James Dean," explained my Thai juror, a historian of Southeast Asian cinema. "He was making a movie, Red Eagle, in 1970 and fell from a helicopter. He was doing his own stunts, as the rumor then was that he was getting less popular."

I inquired about Chaibuncha of our Thai student guides. They’d seen TV documentaries but none of his now-ancient movies.

And what did we watch? The first film we’d ever encountered from Burma, a naive, inept work about some Burmese in Japan who learn that their homeland (no mention of the military occupancy) is the place to be. Three horrid Philippine melodramas. An intriguing Vietnamese neo-realist film about water-buffalo herders. The Letter, a fine Thai tearjerker with a husband dying of a brain tumor. Our winner? The Beautiful Washing Machine, from Malaysia’s James Lee, a deadpan sex comedy somewhere between Luis Buñuel and Tsai Ming-liang.