Vithaya Pansringam has the honour of beating Ryan Gosling into a sorry mess. "I feel privileged!" says the 54-year-old kendo expert, ballet school administrator and now first-bill actor of the film Only God Forgives. "Usually, Ryan beats people into a pulp _ did you see Drive? Well, this time he got it, and I got away!"
Vithaya Pansrigram plays a mysterious ex-cop in Only God Forgives , which will premier at the Cannes Film Festival.
Gosling's magnificently bruised face, eyelids inflamed into fleshly hoods, had a near-iconic quality when the poster of the film first came out two months ago. Shortly thereafter, the international trailer _ with Thai lettering included _ was released, featuring Vithaya, Gosling and Kristin Scott Thomas in a suggestion of feverish, redemptive violence. From then on Only God Forgives has generated a huge buzz and become one of the most expected movies of the year. At this point, we're not quite sure what causes such photogenic injuries to the Gosling character, a gangster who endures a misadventure in Bangkok, but it's likely that Vithaya's has a hand in it.
Is Bangkok that unforgiving to unsuspecting souls who drift by from outside? Vithaya smiles and assures us that we'll see for ourselves in two months when the film opens here.
Before that, Only God Forgives, directed by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, will enjoy a red-carpet premiere in the elite competition at the Cannes Film Festival, which begins next Wednesday. It is one of the few movies eagerly awaited by critics and audiences after Refn's previous film Drive, starring Gosling as a stone-faced getaway driver in Los Angeles, became a worldwide sensation and won the best director prize at Cannes in 2011. Refn was in Bangkok to promote the film when it was released here in October of that year _ that was when he was also prepping Only God Forgives, which was shot entirely in the Thai capital in the first half of 2012.
Vithaya, who took up acting when he was 50, had never seen any of Refn's movies before. After he went for an audition for the film in 2009 and got the nod, his friend brought him DVDs of the director's movies _ the Pusher trilogy, Valhalla Rising, Bronson, etc, mostly hard-driving action films about transformative brutality. "I went to the casting almost four years ago, and that was because Nicolas had wanted to do this film before Drive. But when Drive happened, this one had to wait.
A teaser poster of Only God Forgives , starring Ryan Goslin, Kristin Scott Thomas and Vithaya Pansrigram.
"It was December 2010 when Nicolas returned to Bangkok and we talked again. He had a few people in mind, I supposed. He asked me questions about Thailand and what I think about violence. I think part of the reason I was chosen was also because I'm a kendo black belt. Like all other films of Nicolas', this one is pretty physical. I weighed over 100kg when I got the part, and I had to bring it down to 80kg when I shot the film."
In Only God Forgives, Vithaya plays Chang, an ex-cop who still wields underground influence, commanding respect and fear from the authorities and criminals alike. Gosling plays a conman who arrives in Bangkok to settle a score and has a confrontation with him. Kristin Scott Thomas, sultry in the red-lit scenes glimpsed in the trailer, plays Gosling's mother, and Thai actress Ratha Pho-ngram stars in a supporting role.
In one of those on-screen/off-screen contrasts, Vithaya in real life is a bubbly, chatty bloke unlike the dark, brooding fighter who appears in the film.
''When I first read the script, my initial reaction was, 'Is this me?'. On the set, I was told that my character was a monument or a statue _ a cold, expressionless man,'' he says. ''And that's what I had to become.''
The only Thai star to officially walk up the coveted Cannes' red carpet this year, Vithaya has stepped into the spotlight almost accidentally. As a young man, he dropped out of Ramkhamhaeng University and went to study graphic design in New York. He ended up staying there for eight years before returning to Bangkok to open a ballet school with his American wife. In the meantime, he managed a kendo team that represented Thailand in several Asian competitions.
Because he speaks English well, his name was somehow circulated among casting agencies that supply Thai actors for foreign productions, and Vithaya got his role in a small film, The Prince & Me, in which he plays the ruler of a fictitious Eastern nation. His big break, however, was in Thai film Sop Mai Ngeab (Mindfulness And Murder, based on a novel by former Bangkok Post sub-editor Nick Wilgus and directed by Irish-Thai Tom Waller).
In the film, which has a whiff of Umberto Eco's The Name Of The Rose, he plays a stern-faced monk who cracks the clues of a serial murder in his temple. And before he shot Only God Forgives, Vithaya landed a small role in The Hangover 2.
''You have to be good to catch me in that one!'' he jokes, adding he played a priest who presided over a wedding at the end. However, Vithaya's character in Only God Forgives is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime shot he approaches with both excitement and humility.
''I'm a no-name actor previously in one leading role,'' he says. ''And here I am, going to Cannes with Ryan Gosling and Nicolas. That's a great opportunity.
''My character, Chang, is a man of deep dimensions and secrecy. People talk a lot about the violence in Nicolas' films _ but his representation of violence has something of a spiritual or philosophical quality to it. It's strong and intense, sure, but it also connects with you at a deeper level.''
When in Bangkok in 2011, director Refn talked to the Bangkok Post about the then-still-not-filmed Only God Forgives and his idea about movie violence, and it seems that Vithaya has got the gist of what his boss always has in mind. Refn said: ''The violence in Asian movies is more extreme... they're so surreal, because it's all about heightened reality. On the other hand, the violence in American movies is more true and straightforward.''
Concerning Only God Forgives, Refn said back then the film wouldn't have any car chases but a lot of fight scenes.
''It will be interesting,'' he told us, and we're anxiously waiting to see if he keeps his word.
STRONG ASIAN PRESENCE AT CANNES
Cannes Film Festival _ glittering, bewildering, illustrious, chaotic _ will open next Wednesday with Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (in 3D to boot). No Thai films have made the cut this year in what's believed to be the world's most elite film competition, and Thailand's red-carpet presence will come in the form of the Bangkok-set Only God Forgives (see main story).
But look slightly beyond our borders, and you will see that in this game season of world cinema, the festival has a fairly meaty harvest from Asia, and even Southeast Asia.
In the 20-film competition, besides the freshly baked offerings by Western brand names like the Coen brothers, Steven Soderbergh and Roman Polanski, there are two Japanese titles and one from China. Representing Japan will be Hirokazu Kore-eda's drama Like Father, Like Son and Takashi Miike's possibly blood-soaked Shield Of Straw . From China comes A Touch Of Sin , the new work by Jia Zhangke, who's known for his attentive examination of the Middle Kingdom's fast-morphing soul.
Over to the Un Certain Regard section _ a sidebar showcase, usually seen as less outstanding than the main competition though sometimes yielding surprises _ there are two Filipino films, one French-Cambodian and one from Hong Kong. From the Philippines come Death March by Adolfo Alix Jr, about the transfer of 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war during World War II; and the four-hour-long Norte, Hangganana Ng Kasaysayan by maestro Lav Diaz, noted for his super-long films of transcendental power (four hours is nothing, given that Diaz's films can run up to 12 hours).
Rithy Panh, the best-known French-Cambodian filmmaker, returns to Cannes with L'Image Manquante (The Missing Image ), in which he ''re-creates'' the still photography supposedly taken by the Khmer Rouge during their reign of terror. And from Hong Kong comes Bends by first-time director Flora Lau.
Further afield to the Directors' Fortnight section _ yet another sidebar category organised by the French Film Directors Association _ there's another Filipino film and one Singaporean: On The Job by Erik Matti, and Ilo Ilo by Anthony Chen.
The Philippines especially is having a big year at Cannes _ the biggest any Southeast Asian country has ever had. Besides the three new films listed above, Cannes Classic, a section reserved from cinematic gems of the past, will also screen Leno Brocka's Manila In The Claws of Neon from 1975. That brings the Filipino tally to four. We'll have more reports on all of them in the coming two weeks.
Death March by Filipino director Adolfo Alix Jr.
