Thai Title: Rung tua thii paet khawng khwaam rak
International English Title: Rainbow Boys: The Movie
US DVD Title: Right by Me
Regarding the image to the left, the boys are listed as follow (from left to right) - Ek, Tat, and Nat.

Premise: Based off of Alex Sanchez’s young adult fiction, Rainbow Boys, which is about three high school boys who have their own love triangle going on, are coming of age with their transition into adulthood and their sexual orientations, and go through other difficult issues like parental abuse and homophobic abuse.

In this Thai film, it’s pretty much the same thing, except replace high school with college, and obviously replace the American setting with a very Thai one. Tat (Jackie) and Nat (Pimpong Isarasena na Ayudhya) are best friends and polar opposites from one another except for their sexual orientations. Nat’s effeminate and out of the closet while Tat’s more studious and not out of the closet, especially towards his parents. Nat likes Tat. Tat, however, likes the basketball star, Ek (Palat Ananwattanasiri), who is supposedly straight, with a girlfriend, but that’s all pretty much questioned when Tat and Nat sees Ek at a gathering for gay youth. Later, Tat tutors Ek in math, Tat comes out to his parents, Tat helps Ek through his sexual identity crisis, and Nat comes to his own terms with his own life.

My Opinions: Considering how I can barely remember the film that I’d seen just couple weeks ago, that’s not exactly a good sign. Let’s just say I was thoroughly excited about this film because I read and love the Rainbow Boys trilogy, so to see it in live-action, through a culture and nation I wanted to learn more about, I was stoked to receive the DVD in my hand. Unfortunately, aside from some smexy boy on boy actions, some funny Nat moments, and some cultural references that made me know some more about Thailand, the film’s really not that great nor memorable. What unnerved me the most was the scenes’ transitions. It felt jerky, and it felt incomplete while I watched the film unravel in front of me.

With that said, I wouldn’t say this is a bad film since I’ve seen ones that are worse than this one. (Lost in Translation comes into my mind), but I wouldn’t say this was great either. A shame, really, since I really love the book ever since I read it in my senior year of high school.

Here’s a trailer of some sort for the movie.

Tags: alex sanchez, film, glbt, jackie, palat ananwattanasiri, pimpong isarasena na ayudhya, romance, thai, thailand, united states