A Taste of Place

Sometimes, they will ask: “Is that’s what it’s really like?”
Well, cameras often are part of a lie. It’s easy to make any place look cool, like CSI or a Michael Bay flick.
But sometimes I am happy to say, “Yes. I was there. That’s exactly how it looked. That's exactly how it sounded.”
So here are some films that I think show a realistic view of Southeast Asia (as I know it). Most are quality works of cinema as well.

Cyclo: This 1995 Vietnamese film has some great camerawork which captures Sai Gon. Though the country has opened up for greater development since the film wrapped, a lot of the neighborhoods haven’t changed much. The constant hum of motorcycles during the street scenes bears a close resemblance to the real song of the city’s outdoor areas. The interior scenes capture the atmosphere of the airy but crowded living spaces in the city.

City of Ghosts: Despite the fact that many critics branded this film as too preachy, it has some respectable cinematography of dusty Phnom Penh. The aged temples, monsoon stained villas, and narrow, foreboding alleyways are signatures of the city. Also, the canvas roofed markets and street stalls captured in the street scenes are almost too realistic.

Of subtler elements, the film has several scenes lit by florescent, a consistent form of lighting found in Southeast Asia. The way the lights flickered and played off the plaster walls made me think I was sitting there in Matt Dillon's guesthouse room.

Cavite: An indie film where many of the scenes take place in Manila's streets, as well as the narrow lanes of the city’s squalid shantytowns. Though I have never been in the extremely poor areas, I can say that I could almost smell the jeepney clogged streets and busy, narrow aisled markets when I was watching this film.

Perhaps the first film I saw which was set in Southeast Asia was The Year of Living Dangerously. An early scene in this film was set in a narrow neighborhood in Jakarta. It captured all that attracted me to Asia: It’s exoticism, mystery, energy, and the seeming proximity to both life and death.

Finally, a fun one. As far as the back alleys and endless apartment buildings of Bangkok, I recommend a trio of films by the Pang brothers from their pre-horror days. The best of these is One Take Only, a film which follows a drug dealer and prostitute as they try to make it out of their gritty lives and onto something better. The apartment tenement where they live is typical Bangkok, managing to be both clean and dirty at once. In Bangkok Dangerous, we see some of the city’s back alley’s a go-go bars from the point of view of a deaf hitman. This film has more grit than the reality. Finally, The Tesseract, which follows an expat psychologist and a drug runner as they wander, and sometimes sprint, though Bangkok’s back alleys and markets. These films are extremely fun as well as giving you a unique viewpoint of Bangkok.