La Mala Educación (2004)

In the early 1960s, two school boys Ignacio Rodriguez (Francisco Boira) and Enrique Goded (Fele Martínez), discover love, cinema, and fear in a religious school. Padre Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho), the school principal and their literature teacher, is witness to and part of these discoveries. On discovering the two boys' affection for each other, the priest, who is himself engrossed with Ignacio, is jealous and threatens to expel Enrique as a "bad influence". In an attempt to prevent this Ignacio promises to do whatever the priest asks of him. After molesting Ignacio, the priest expels Enrique anyway.

The film jumps to the 1980s with the boys now young adults. In Madrid, Ignacio (Gael García Bernal) lands on the doorstep of Enrique (Nacho Pérez), who is now a famous filmmaker. Ignacio is an aspiring actor with the stage name Ángel Andrade. He has a semi-autobiographical manuscript which he hopes Enrique will turn into a screenplay and cast him in one of the major roles. The short story is about their time at the Catholic school together and the physical and sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Padre Manolo. It also includes a fictionalized account of their reunion after all those years.

Enrique wants to adapt Ignacio's story into a film, but "Ignacio's" condition is that he play the part of Zahara, the transsexual lead. Enrique remains skeptical, for he feels that the Ignacio whom he loved and the Ignacio of today are totally different people. He drives to Galicia to Ignacio's mother and learns that the real Ignacio has been dead for four years and that the man who came to his office is really Ignacio's younger brother, Juan.

Enrique's interest is piqued, and he decides to do the movie with Juan in the role of Ignacio to find out what drives Juan. Enrique and "Ignacio" start a relationship, and Enrique revises the script so that it ends with Padre Manolo, whom Ignacio was trying to blackmail to get money for sex reassignment surgery, having Ignacio murdered. When the scene is shot, "Ignacio" breaks out in tears unexpectedly.

The movie set is visited by Manuel Berenguer (Lluís Homar), who is none other than the real Padre Manolo, who has resigned from Church duty. Manuel confesses to Enrique that the new ending of the film is not far from the truth: the real Ignacio blackmailed Manuel, who somehow managed to scratch together the money but also took an interest in Ignacio's younger brother Juan. Juan and Manuel started a relationship and after a while realized they both wanted to see Ignacio dead. Juan scored some very pure heroin, so that his brother would die by overdose after shooting up.

Enrique is shocked and not at all interested in Juan's weak vindications for what he did to his brother. Finally, before he leaves, Juan gives Enrique a piece of paper: a letter to Enrique that Ignacio was in the middle of typing when he died.

"La Mala Educación" is a potent, complex, twisty, sexually provocative thriller very similar to a Hitchcock film. It features a gender-bending performance from Gael Garcia-Bernal, and an ingenious convoluted plot. It's a remarkably creative comment on sexual abuse among Roman Catholic clergy, but is far from being straightforward or confined to one theme. The film weaves a complex tale of exploitation, deceit, ambition, seduction, and blackmail that places a story within a story and shifts back and forth in time. Alberto Iglesias composed the music, and Pedro Almodóvar wrote the screenplay and directed. In Spanish with English subtitles. The English title is "Bad Education".

Bangkok Love Story (2007)

In the world of Thai organized crime there is a star assassin named Mhek (Rattanaballang Tohssawat) , a lone gunman who kills "bad people" to satisfy his bosses, but cannot kill "good people". He is assigned to kidnap a police informant named Iht (Chaiwat Thongsaeng), but Mhek has a change of heart when he is ordered to kill Iht. In a gunbattle with his employers, Mhek is wounded, but Iht grabs Mhek's gun and returns fire. The two men then escape on Mhek's motorcycle. At Mhek's rooftop hide-out, Iht tends to Mhek's wound and finds himself attracted to Mhek. While giving Mhek a bath one day, Iht initiates sexual intercourse with the hitman. Conflicted, Mhek demands that Iht leave him alone. Iht returns home to his fiancee, Saai (Chutcha Rujinanon), but is no longer interested in continuing a relationship with her. He spends his days pining over Mhek, and tracks down Mhek's brother, Mhok (Wiradit Srimalai), and their mother. Mhek is the sole support of his mother and younger brother, both of them HIV-positive. The source of their infection is the abusive live-in stepfather.

Mhek's dream is to take his mother and brother away from Bangkok to the mountains of Mae Hong Son Province. But after Mhek's mother has realised Mhok sold himself to survive, she commits suicide by hanging herself. At the same time Iht's fiancee, Saai, also witnesses Mhek and Iht kissing, and terminates their marriage plans. Meanwhile, Mhek's former employers are gunning for him. Mhek decides to hunt them, and he manages to kill them. He also goes to Mhek's former bosses' hide-out to try and stop Mhek, but he is too late and misses Mhek by a second. Iht gets injured when the wife of Mhek's former boss shoots a clock that shatters in Iht's face. Mhek, meanwhile, is planning to meet his brother at the railway station to leave Bangkok for good. But before he can board the train, he is apprehended by the police and sent to prison.

Years pass by. Iht visits Mhek in prison and reveals that he was left blind in the final gunbattle with Mhek's bosses. Mhok commits suicide while at a Hospice in Northern Thailand because he no longer has the energy to fight his disease. Eventually, Mhek is released from prison, and Iht meets him. But before the two men can leave to start their life together, Mhek is gunned down by an assassin.

Iht eventually gets his sight back, and the first thing he does is to look at his mobile phone, which has a picture of Mhek on it that he took many years before and a video taken by Mhek himself saying that all along, he loved Iht and that he would love him to his last breath. The ending could have been triumphant, but instead is tragic, which makes the film even more powerful.

This gay romantic crime action drama is the story of a man who falls in love with a gunman who is assigned to kill him. The cast of actors is excellent and the chemistry between the two leads is undiluted by the forces that are meant to separate them. Ultimately it is a love story between two classes of people whose discovery of forbidden love emphasizes some universal truths. It is a well-made, beautifully photographed film, but unfortunately there are censored versions with artificial fuzzy and darkened areas. Plus the DVD cover art is misleading. Poj Arnon wrote the script and directed. The Thai title is "Puen". In Thai with English subtitles.