“Do you think it’s possible to love someone without being afraid of losing them? But at the same time is it possible to be alive in this world without loving anyone at all?”
Those questions are at the heart of the gentle, bittersweet Love of Siam, Thailand’s 2008 submission to the Academy Awards. They’re spoken by Mew to his best friend Tong, childhood pals who have rediscovered each other as teenagers, both having suffered wrenching losses: Mew of his beloved grandmother and Tong of his older sister, whose disappearance years before still haunts his parents. Mew has somewhat inexplicably become the lead singer in a boy band (Did Lou Pearlman move to Bangkok?), but when he reconnects with Tong his love songs take on a whole new dimension.
This article appears in Oct 8-14, 2009.
