In Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s new thriller Morte Cucina, a waitress (Sao) notices a handsome man (Korn) who comes to eat at the restaurant where she works in Bangkok. As the proverb says, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach: Korn is a gourmand, and Sao takes cooking classes, learning how to prepare lavish meals for him. Then Korn develops a mysterious illness...
In a subplot, a younger woman in Thailand’s deep south converts to Islam and gets married, though she is cast out of her community after they discover that she wasn’t a virgin. Later, we learn that she had been sexually assaulted by a drunk man on a beach.
The film doesn’t make any direct connections between these two scenarios, though the younger woman’s ordeals can be interpreted as flashbacks to Sao’s past. Sao tells Korn that she’s from Songkla (a southern province), and asks him if he has ever visited, and this apparent small talk implies that Sao was assaulted by Korn and disowned by her Muslim husband.
Korn becomes physically dependent on Sao as his health deteriorates, but they also seem to develop a mutual emotional dependency over the years that they spend together. This feels outdated, like the sexist storyline in Thai soap operas when a rich man rapes a woman but she forgives him and they fall in love.
Sao is slowly and methodically killing Korn with her cooking, in revenge for his drunken assault. But she always remains disapassionate, and there is no cathartic moment of confrontation. Perhaps that would have been too conventional? Instead, an unexpected final use of the dining table signals her empowerment. (I’m being ambiguous here to avoid spoilers.)
Morte Cucina comes almost twenty years after Pen-ek’s Ploy (พลอย), and both films include sex scenes with topless female nudity. Ploy was censored in 2007, and when I interviewed Pen-ek for Thai Cinema Uncensored, he explained that “they were afraid that in one of the cinemas we might show the uncut version. So, there were police everywhere.” In contrast, Morte Cucina has been released here uncut and rated ‘15’.
A minor footnote: Morte Cucina’s title, which literally translates as ‘death kitchen’ in Italian, is grammatically incorrect. Its Thai title is more prosaic: ครัวสาว (‘Sao’s kitchen’).
In a subplot, a younger woman in Thailand’s deep south converts to Islam and gets married, though she is cast out of her community after they discover that she wasn’t a virgin. Later, we learn that she had been sexually assaulted by a drunk man on a beach.
The film doesn’t make any direct connections between these two scenarios, though the younger woman’s ordeals can be interpreted as flashbacks to Sao’s past. Sao tells Korn that she’s from Songkla (a southern province), and asks him if he has ever visited, and this apparent small talk implies that Sao was assaulted by Korn and disowned by her Muslim husband.
Korn becomes physically dependent on Sao as his health deteriorates, but they also seem to develop a mutual emotional dependency over the years that they spend together. This feels outdated, like the sexist storyline in Thai soap operas when a rich man rapes a woman but she forgives him and they fall in love.
Sao is slowly and methodically killing Korn with her cooking, in revenge for his drunken assault. But she always remains disapassionate, and there is no cathartic moment of confrontation. Perhaps that would have been too conventional? Instead, an unexpected final use of the dining table signals her empowerment. (I’m being ambiguous here to avoid spoilers.)
Morte Cucina comes almost twenty years after Pen-ek’s Ploy (พลอย), and both films include sex scenes with topless female nudity. Ploy was censored in 2007, and when I interviewed Pen-ek for Thai Cinema Uncensored, he explained that “they were afraid that in one of the cinemas we might show the uncut version. So, there were police everywhere.” In contrast, Morte Cucina has been released here uncut and rated ‘15’.
A minor footnote: Morte Cucina’s title, which literally translates as ‘death kitchen’ in Italian, is grammatically incorrect. Its Thai title is more prosaic: ครัวสาว (‘Sao’s kitchen’).
