Dance-themed films are a well-explored genre and vary from the fun and romantic (Step Up 2: The Streets) to the artful and terrifying (Black Swan). So it’s exciting that we now have a Thai equivalent in Kon Khon. But due perhaps to khon’s mythical overtones and its importance to Thai culture, the film ends up biting off a lot more than it can chew. While the sets and performances do it justice, the film also panders to mainstream drama and ends up overreaching in terms of believability.
Chad (Apinya Rungpitakmana) is an orphaned khon dancer in the house of respected and righteous Kru Yod (Sorapong Chatree). His childhood enemy Kom (Kajornpong Pornpisut) dances for Yod’s rival, fame-hungry Kru Sek (Nirut Sirijnaya). These two rivalries play out with interjections of secondary plots: Yod’s young wife Raem has the hots for Chad; Chad has the hots for the girl his friend Tue likes; Chad doesn’t know who is father is. Add to that some intense khon sequences for a big temple festival and you have the film in a (messy) nutshell.
Eventually, you realize that the film is drawing parallels between the karmic conundrums of the Ramakien and the characters of the film: the orphaned prodigy, the cunning stepmother, the betrayal of the venerable teacher. While connecting the two realms of narrative is a pretty interesting endeavor, equating the actions of demi-gods and sacred avatars in a highly stylized universe to those of modern teenagers comes across as ridiculous at times. It’s also is not helped by the utter lack of charisma in the younger actors whose screen presence pales in comparison to the older, slightly less important characters.
Moreover, the narrative expectations of khon are different from those of contemporary mainstream cinema. Its masked characters are gloriously one-dimensional and static, but coming from the protagonists of Kon Khon, the result is random and irritating. Why, for instance, is Raem, who is otherwise a devoted wife to Teacher Yod, so intent on having sex with that pipsqueak Chad? Why is he considered such a hot khon dancer when he’s clearly hapless, untalented and generally a disaster at life? And why is Kom so thoroughly evil in every way?
Still, there are some visual feasts in the dance sequences, and we do begrudgingly applaud the scale of the enterprise. Plus it is soap opera-esque drama at its best, so if you leave your inner critic at the door, you will be entertained.