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From a critical standpoint, it would have been helpful if Sad Beauty was a description of the movie as well as the title character. But when it comes right down to it, the film is often quite ugly.
That’s not a value judgment, per se; what it means is that the film goes to some very dark, very ugly places, and the visuals reflect that. There are scattered moments of visual grace, but none of them ever quite shake that underlying sense of dread and despair.
Staying true to its grim nature is an impressive feat by actress turned writer/director/producer Bongkod Bencharongkul, making only her second film. It would be easy for this story about friendship to default to an obvious “friendship conquers all” message. In fact, even if it felt contradictory to everything that came before it, there’s a decent chance the audience would accept it if the chemistry of our leads was good enough. So it’s to Bencarongkul’s credit that she doesn’t take the easy way out.
This is a story about two damaged, troubled people. And whatever else the film might get right or wrong, it is never less than clear eyed in depicting the tragic reality that even the truest of friendships can’t save you from yourself.
Yo (Florence Faivre) is a washed up actress with some kind of attitude problem that has gotten her blackballed out of the industry. Besides all the drugs and the nonstop partying, Yo’s chief enabler in denying her troubled present is Pim (Pakawadee Pengsuwan), a demure, somewhat religious young woman with some problems of her own.
To say more about their journey wouldn’t necessarily be spoiling anything, but I choose to leave the details obscure, since one of the unexpected appeals of the film is how quickly things go south for Yo and Pim.
It’s a parade of misery, but at least they’re suffering together.
As you’d expect from a film about friendship, the truest virtues of the piece come by way of the performances. Sad Beauty is not a hugely dialogue driven film, and one thing the film excels at is conveying shifts in the emotional spaces of its characters through the visuals and through the body language of its stars. The details are subtle yet telling, such as the rhymed scenes in the beginning where Yo and Pim each find potential new suitors. Pim silently stands by observing Yo’s date and explaining his flaws only after the fact, while the typically confrontational Yo takes a more direct approach when someone tries to woo Pim at a club. Their reactions there and elsewhere fill in a history far better than pages and pages of dialogue ever could.
Faivre and Pengsuwan are clearly the show here, and their rapport and connection are the anchors to keep us grounded even as events begin to pile up and the film takes a sharp turn into the world of melodrama.
It just becomes one thing after another, and at a certain point the realization dawns that Sad Beauty has essentially become every Lifetime movie ever fused together in a kind of Tori Spelling Hellscape.
Which, you know, sounds pretty great on paper. But Sad Beauty has a tendency to negate any and all lurid thrills in the service of maintaining its dour integrity. A few fleeting snatches of mordant humor may pop up here and there, but for the most part it’s a mirthless journey.
