Elisheva

Direct link - vipa.me/en/contents/6557/thecavedlife

She most certainly did NOT imagine the two people she was closest to in the entire world conspiring to change the course of her life without bothering to tell her.

Kamfa talking to the photograph of his wife was how the director showed this, that he needed her there to talk about all of this with and counsel him. He kept trying to.

His redemption arc also fits with the emotional arc for the entire lakorn. It's long to explain how that's different in Thai stories, driven by emotion as they are rather than events. Don't know if it's worth posting something I wrote in discussions?

You're bringing up very important points. I hope others hear them.

They knew each other previously, from their studies maybe? I don't remember the specific, but it was mentioned early on.
She was never delusioned that Saenkaew was in love with her. She believed that he would grow to love her once they were together, she said this several times. She was delighted that her arranged marriage was with someone *she* loved, and a kind man who was good to her.
Yes, in that world, in that strata of society with arranged marriages? It's not far-fetched, especially as she'd have been thinking more love and support than lust and passion. She'd probably seen it amongst people she knew and she had certainly read it in novels. She is also young and inexperienced, not so worldy-wise as yourself.
By the time Saenkaew is honest with her, she's in too much pain to hear things properly and think it through. The men are characters in the story of her pain and growth as much as she is a character in theirs. That's where this lakorn shines, no matter how intent BL stans are on backseating her to the men.

Delighted to share. The resonance of that scene was so beautiful everyone should know <3 It's lovely when it's a het wedding too, it's not the grand showy kind, just family and friends at home, a simple action and a lot of love.
Such a deep and significant act of complete acceptance from Grandma and Pin <3

Sasin knows her best and he is so convinced she'll understand once he explains it to her... he keeps putting it off until it's too late and she finds out by hearing them making plans which will change the course of her life without telling her.
I'll go with his, and the scriptwriters', understanding of her. The risk, as borne out in the story, was in not telling her. Both men acknowledge that they should have.

mhm. and i'm filling in context for you and others so you can more fully appreciate the significance and emotional impact of the scene. take what you felt and multiply it, because it was very resonant <3
apologies if it came across as heavy handed or too much detail.

There's no need to put quotes around marry. Parents/elders tying sacred threads for their kids is one way to marry them. Cho Yai's dialogue made it clear this was how she saw it, talking about binding them together and calling them life partners. She explained that it's a tradition from their fictional country but it's Thai.
Pin was Sasin's only family prior to his marriage to Saenkaew, I don't know if being nong sao shifted her status in the ritual. She spoke of the thread binding them too.
If you watch outside of BL, you'll see it sometimes. BL will probably go racing ahead in including it for a few years though =D
S&S weren't able to register their marriage, but within the family they were married. No quotes. You wouldn't do that for a same sex church wedding in a western country before registration was equalised, right?

Anyway, throughout the whole lakorn, it was women getting things done while the men waffled about and complicated it all.

They set up Duangkamol really well, hiding her in plain sight. Every time they showed her, they added in another detail, like stealing food from a vendor at the train station, then food and a knife followed by a wee bit of chase to distract us from the fact that the mad woman now had a knife. Kudos to that, I missed it at the time =D
She got to where Bodin was the same way everyone else did - it was close to the train station. Or more properly, Bodin followed Saenkaew and Pin to the train station and caught up to them just before they got there. Sasin was there looking for Saenkaew and Duangkamol had fled the station with her fruit and knife.
Everything was filtered in slowly - motive, madness, location, weapon. Very clever writing.

And if I counter this, how much further will you escalate? Not going there. Take care.

yes, for all that the majority here focus on the BL side of it, there is very much a women's story interwoven through it.

(I've borrowed and credited your insight in my review. Thank you for pointing it out.)

She was in pain. Immense pain. Sasin was the only person who loved her and he betrayed her. What she kept saying, that no one cared about her feelings, that was true. The men and her parents were all too caught up in their own to think about her. Just a quick "She'll understand" but then never actually telling her.
She acted out of that pain. Yeah, it a bad decision. But the vise of pressure that young woman was under? She wasn't vindictive, she was trying to prioritise her own needs because no one else was. By the time Rachawadee caught on and tried, Pin wasn't in a place where she could hear it.
This was all there in the lakorn. Her pain was such an important part of the story.
If they had brought her in on the secret early, she could have had some quiet moments to come to terms with it and then she would have thrown herself into shipping them. That was her nature.
And come on, it was 1963. She had never seen any BL to teach her that women's role is always to take a back seat to the men.

Pin would have been their biggest ally and supporter all along if they had just brought her in on the secret early instead of letting it go until the day before the wedding.

It's something Thai writers do, especially for parent characters, and not just in BL. You're entitled to your preferences but it's not your place to tell them what they 'need' to do in telling their stories - we are guests in their house after all and they are kind enough to share their stories with us.

Also BL is often modelling social change, which means some of the homophobic obstacle characters have a change of heart at the end and are forgiven. Sending the message that change is possible and leads to good outcomes is so important.

The white threads are 'sai sin', blessed by monks and tied around someone's wrist with blessings and for protection. Parents/elders may do this to marry their kids - Grandma married them and Pin added her own blessings. Not legally of course, registering a marriage is different.
There are lots of different marriage rites in Thailand, depending on the families' traditions.
Also Grandma had to be 'useless' in order to be so accepting so quickly once she was clued in. Not great characterisation but worth it for the significance of her tying the sacred threads.

Pin doesn't have any other family by the end, so where would she go if they divorced? Two possibilities that I see - one is that they've remained legally married, society thinks of them as married, the family knows better. (Grandma tying sacred threads for Saenkaew and Sasin was her marrying them, so for the family Saenkaew and Pin are no longer married.)

The other is that their time together in Chiang Mai was brief enough no one outside the family knew they were married, so they just told everyone she is a sister/daughter and divorced quietly (hmm, is annulment a thing in Thailand?) That would work better for her finding a husband. Not that the lakorn has thought that far ahead :)

Either way, they certainly seem to be treating her as part of the family - they're supporting her, maybe some money of her own, certainly a dowry etc if/when she marries again. Whatever they'd do for a daughter by birth.

Some of the gold bars were given to her evil parents for her dowry. Some of the jewellery went to her. The rest will have been packed up to Chiang Mai.

great work hiding that in plain sight - like HOW are they going to get out of this one, and the answer was both unexpected and well set up too,

that wig was the only way to make Tuk Duangta look her age. that woman is a force of nature =D

subs on Gaga were fine for me.
but also see gypsy cloud's discussion thread or post above for another option to put subtitles on the official YT. it's still legal and supporting the lakorn.

Important issues, superficial treatment. More like a European man on a work jolly rather than a serious documentary. Maybe the full length version is better but this gave me no reason to hope for that.