The Christmas Dream Review: Thailand's Pioneering Stage-to-Screen Spectacle in Half a Century Is Big On Sentimental Spectacle.
Hailed as the initial musical production from Thailand in five decades, The Christmas Dream comes under the direction of British filmmaker Paul Spurrier and offers up a curious blend of the contemporary and the classic. The film serves as a modern-day rags-to-riches tale that travels from the northern highlands to the bustling capital of Bangkok, featuring vintage, vibrant aesthetics and plenty of emotionally rich show-stopping numbers. Its songs are crafted by Spurrier, set to an symphonic soundtrack from Mickey Wongsathapornpat.
An Odyssey of Innocence and Ethics
Exhibiting a Michelle Yeoh-like determination but in a much smaller package, young actress Amata Masmalai takes on the role of Lek, a pre-teen schoolgirl. She is forced to escape after her abusive stepfather Nin (played by Vithaya Pansringarm) brutally kills her mother. Venturing forth with only her one-legged doll Bella for company, Lek relies on a unyielding sense of right and wrong, directed toward a new home by the spirit of her deceased mother. Her path is populated by a series of picaresque characters who test her resolve, including a spoiled rich girl desperately seeking a companion and a charlatan physician hawking dubious remedies.
Spurrier's affection for the song-and-dance format is plain to see – or, more accurately, it is resplendent. Initial rural sequences in particular capture the ruddy glow reminiscent of The Sound of Music.
Dance and Cinematic Pizzazz
The choreography often possesses a quickstep visual energy. A memorable highlight erupts on a corporate business park, which acts as Lek's first taste of the Bangkok corporate grind. With suited professionals tumbling in and out of a large mechanical cortege, this represents the singular moment where The Christmas Dream approaches the stylized complexity found in golden-age musical cinema.
Story and Song Shortcomings
Despite being lavishly orchestrated, much of the score is excessively anodyne musically and lyrically. Rather than strategically placing songs at pivotal points in the plot, Spurrier douses the film with them, seemingly trying to mask a somewhat weak narrative. Only during the start and finish – with the mother's death and when her spirits wane in Bangkok – is there enough challenge to balance an overly straightforward and saccharine narrative arc.
Fleeting glimmers of mild class satire, such as when Lek's stroke of luck has greedy locals swarming her, are unlikely to satisfy older audiences. While might embrace the general positive outlook, the exotic setting cannot conceal a fundamentally sense of blandness.
