The Christmas Dream Review: Thailand's Pioneering Musical in Half a Century Is Big On Heartfelt Pageantry.
Reportedly the initial musical production from Thailand in five decades, The Christmas Dream comes under the direction of Englishman Paul Spurrier and presents a fascinating mixture of the contemporary and the classic. It functions as a contemporary rags-to-riches tale that journeys from the northern highlands to the urban sprawl of Bangkok, adorned with vintage, vibrant aesthetics and plenty of heartstring-tugging musical highlights. Its songs are the work of Spurrier, accompanied by an orchestral score composed by Mickey Wongsathapornpat.
An Odyssey of Innocence and Ethics
Portrayed with a steely resolve but in a much smaller frame, Amata Masmalai plays Lek, a pre-teen schoolgirl. She is compelled to flee after her abusive stepfather Nin (portrayed by Vithaya Pansringarm) brutally kills her mother. Venturing forth with only her disabled toy Bella for companionship, Lek is guided by a unyielding sense of right and wrong, promised toward a better life by the ghost of her late mum. Her quest is peppered with a series of colorful companions who test her resolve, among them a spoiled rich girl in dire need of a true friend and a charlatan physician hawking questionable remedies.
The director's love of the song-and-dance format is plain to see – or, to be precise, it is gloriously evident. Initial rural sequences in particular bottle the ruddy glow reminiscent of The Sound of Music.
Dance and Cinematic Flair
The dance routines frequently has a lively snap and pace. A particular standout erupts on a corporate business park, which serves as Lek's introduction to the Bangkok corporate grind. With suited professionals tumbling in and out of a large clockwork procession, this stands as the singular moment where The Christmas Dream approaches the stylized complexity characteristic of classic era musical cinema.
Musical and Narrative Shortcomings
Although lavishly arranged, a lot of the music is excessively bland both in melody and lyrics. Rather than strategically placing songs at key points in the plot, Spurrier douses the film with them, apparently overcompensating for a underdeveloped storyline. Only during the beginning and conclusion – with the mother's death and when her hope falters in Bangkok – is there sufficient hardship to balance an otherwise straightforward and saccharine journey.
Brief hints of mild class satire, such as when Lek's stroke of luck has greedy locals swarming her, are hardly enough for older viewers. Young children could buy into the pervasive positive outlook, the foreign setting fails to disguise a fundamentally narrative blandness.
