Anna and the King

* * *

Cast: Jodie Foster, Chow Yun-Fat, Bai Ling, Tom Felton, Syed Alwi

Director: Andy Tennant

Rating: M

Opens: Now at Village Hoyts theatres

Review:Greg Dixon


It is not for nothing that the biggest section of most bookshops is the one marked romance. And it's not for nothing that Titanic was the highest grossing film of all time.

We really can't, it would seem, gobble up enough of such confections spun from idealised love and its attendant melodrama.

All of which explains why this crowd-pleasing late-19th-century tale of the platonic romance between the King of Siam (now Thailand) and an English schoolteacher has now reached version three.

The story - allegedly based in fact, but certainly derived from the diaries of Anna Leonowens - first made it into cinemas in 1946, and was remade a decade later as a musical, with baldy man Yul Bryner as the singin' king.

The latest variant adds little to the rosy, fairytale complexion of its predecessors and it seems as dated and as oldfashioned as those that came before.

Nobody sweats, nobody even glistens, as the cast makes their way through set pieces that are not as lush or as epic as you might expect - perhaps a product of Tennant's limited experience directing for the big screen.

The tone is as earnest as a school play as the script labours its way through a succession of East meets West, man meets woman cliches.

Chow Yun-Fat's King Mongkut is a gel-haired giant among his people who spends the entire first two acts smiling with what might have been benevolence, but could have been smugness.

As Anna, Foster gives her usual steady if bloodless performance, though oddly her school ma'am seems a rather unenthusiastic lover.

How they thrust and parry, though. He spouts Buddhist wisdom, she mouths Christian commonsense, and everybody learns something.

But none of it can hide this story's dodgy subtext. Mongkut, despite the smiling, cultivated European manners and the ancient axioms, is king of a sometimes brutal feudal society. He, despite Anna's love, is the ruler who puts two lovers to death so he will not lose face.

So, a fine if suspect romance with no kisses then?

Well, that depends. It's probably best to say that Anna and the King is this year's Titanic.