AWARDS: * Best mid-length Documentary - HotDocs 2012 * Best film at the Antenna Film Festival in Sydney in 2013
My Thai Bride
Category |
Environment, Ethnography, Sexuality, Social Issues, Women
Year |
2011
Country |
Australia
Running time |
55’
Format |
Production |
Showreal Films Pty Ltd
Director |
David Tucker
In Wales, Ted doesn't exist. This 46-year-old single man feels lonely in a society where only young people count. When he goes to Bangkok on a business trip, he suddenly finds women who are interested in him. He meets Tip, a beautiful but poor Thai woman, and falls in love.
Ted returns home to Wales, but keeps in touch with Tip. He decides to help her break free of prostitution and returns to Thailand to live with her in a village in the north of Thailand, where they marry and start a pig farm. He is not one of a kind - hordes of Western men have been lured to the Thai countryside. Ted loses any control he had of the situation when his new wife starts running the finances.
Tip becomes increasingly distant and barely allows him to spend any money. Before long, Ted has had enough. He leaves penniless, to live on credit in a cheap hotel in a town nearby. This documentary tells the story from both perspectives. The interviews are accompanied by images of Ted in Bangkok and Tip in her home village. Gradually, we learn what their life together was like.
Back in Wales, Ted decides to return once more to Tip's village and face the painful confrontation with his former lover.