Chocolate

Zen is the autistic daughter born of an illicit liaison between yakuza Masashi and his Thai lover Zin, who has betrayed her boss Number 8 and his gang of ruthless ladyboys. Their lives are spared after Masashi returns to Japan and Zin supposedly ceases all contact with him. Little Zen spends her time eating chocolates, watching muay thai students train next door, and taking in videos of Tony Jaa in action films. She grows into a generally uncommunicative young woman with an uncanny ability for martial arts and intuitive catching skills. When Zin is diagnosed with cancer, young nephew Moom helps Zen become a street performer to pay for her chemotherapy. Moom also sets out to recover Zin’s debts but when his claims are refused, Zen’s talents are deployed. In rapid succession she dispatches the various debtors and their goons – at an ice factory, a “Choco” packaging plant, and a meat market. At the same time, Zin is being terrorized by Number 8 for her renewed contact with Masashi, and when Moom is kidnapped by the tranny gang, the stage is set for a final confrontation with Number 8. Chocolate is not only a showcase for

Jeeja’s astounding martial arts and stunt talents (she is a taekwondo expert in real life) but also a web of references that signpost one direction of Thai action cinema. Its chocolate in-joke (Zen eats Smarties to get smart); the riposte to Cinema Tarantino (from Kill Bill animation to samurai swordplay for the final showdown, and the inspired Epileptic Boxer who echoes the leather slave in Pulp Fiction); and homages to Bruce Lee’s Thai ice factory scene from The Big Boss (Zen was supposed to watch Lee on TV instead of Tony Jaa but copyright issues prevented it), Chocolate displays a confidence that synthesizes a clutch of sources into something new. Indeed, one of the possible origins of the term muay is to draw together different strands into one. The supposed mixed Thai-Japanese ethnicity of Zen epitomizes this hybridity. As in Lee’s The Game Of Death, the film builds the skills and complexity of the fight scenes as it progresses. The “simple” street brawl with a bunch of louts that displays Zen’s burgeoning talent early on evolves at the end to a full-on extended climax that involves swordplay, muay thai, kung fu, and leaps and falls in real time and space. This scene moves from a formal interior to the exterior chaos of urban Bangkok to underscore the increasingly frenetic pacing and excitement of the combat as Zen pursues her attackers. The final sequence is a leap, kick and punch piece of poetry that is one of the most liberating action scenes in the cinema - it confirms that Thai films are now the most exhilarating and inventive in the realistic action genre.