The Good Woman of Bangkok

The Australian filmmaker Dennis O'Rourke compares his film The Good Woman of Bangkok with Brecht's plays: ironical parables on the impossibility to lead a good life in an imperfect world. The Good Woman of Bangkok is a documentary about prostitution as a metaphor of capitalism and of all relationships between men and women, in this case on the boundaries of race and culture. It is also a film about the voyeuristic tendencies that are inherent in making a film and in watching one. When O'Rourke was forty-three, his marriage went on the rocks. He tried to understand how love can be banal and profound at the same time. He wanted to meet a Thai prostitute to make a film about her so he went to Bangkok: Mecca for the western man with fantasies about exotic sex and love without pain. As a customer, O'Rourke gets to know Aoi. He falls in love with her and they have a nine-month relationship. Through Aoi, O'Rourke - being personally involved - offers a view of the economic circumstances that force Aoi and many others into prostitution. He wants to help her escape from that kind of life by buying her and her family a farm. She accepts the offer, but refuses his love. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)