The second-highest grossing film ever in Thailand, The Iron Ladies is a typically mediocre example of the Priscilla/To Wong Foo line of hyper-commercial drag queen comedies that always seem to delight audiences and make a lot of money. These films are genetically malformed ancestors of the ancient zany-cross-dressing formula – deployed with finesse in Some Like It Hot, for example, or every other 1970s British TV comedy – that put straight male actors in drag so everyone can laugh at them but at the same time try to push a pro-gay, respect-and-tolerance-for-the-freaks angle that is cancelled out by their simultaneous blatant exploitation of every drag queen/poofter cliché under the sun. Bizarrely, this old-fashioned and incredibly patronising The Elephant Man school of compassion is generally supported by gay audiences and gay media commentators, who by and large have championed films such as these.

However, it is funny to see a man in glitter make up tossing his hair/wig defiantly after he spikes a winning volleyball shot to the far corner of the opposition’s court. And, like Priscilla and Foo, there’s a tangible warmth and irresistible cheesy sentimentality that makes harsh criticism difficult. In short, they’re like real drag shows: simple, derivative and quite the opposite thing to the show of gay pride defiance that they claim to be but ingratiatingly desperate to please and entertain.

The Iron Ladies follows the true story of the 1996 Thai National Volleyball champions, a team made up of drag queens, trannies and gay guys that attracted a huge popular following and enjoyed a post-Championships run of Thai media fame. Footage of the original Iron Ladies appear over the closing credits, and it’s deflating to see a group of calm, composed kathoeys who contrast completely with the shrill archetypes of the film. Why Western – specifically, American – concepts and practices of homophobia and intolerance are jammed into a Thai milieu is anyone’s guess. Visitors to Thailand or any country in South Asia can’t fail to notice that gender roles in that part of the world and treatment of homosexuality, cross-dressing and transsexualism have no points of connection whatsoever with their Western counterparts.

I can remember watching the Indonesian “Family Feud” and on back-to-back episodes, the male sons of separate Indonesian families wore soft make-up and had long, feminine hairstyles and delicate – what Westerners may call “queeny” – mannerisms. Hijra, the word for India’s gypsy male eunuchs, translates as “third sex”, while drag shows and sex change surgery have long been major foreign currency magnets in Thailand. This isn’t to suggest that South Asia is a paradise of tolerance and a world of blasé attitudes towards non-conventional sexualities and lifestyles – cultures of this region are as critical and conservative in regards to these topics as most other cultures are – but the manifestation and expression of these reservations is very different. Trawling packs of gay-bashing teenage boys and vindictive homophobic officialdom are specific characteristics of America, not Thailand. Can we surmise that the film has been structured to appeal to as many US movie-goers as possible? Is part of its domestic success its air of international martyred drag-queens at the multiplex commercialism?

So in and of themselves, the film’s scenes of sneering heteros and malevolent air of approaching gay bashing don’t really make a lot of sense. It’s self-contradictory to show in one shot how Thai people embraced the Iron Ladies and cheered them on to the championship, then in the next shot try to show how the Iron Ladies are battling amorphous, widespread oppression and discrimination from their compatriots. Live in Thailand for twenty years and you’ll be lucky to see one person lose their temper. In this film, frowns, angry red-faces and vitriolic yelling arguments are found in almost every scene. Also, like Camp, while the film positions itself as Gay Pride, it’s the hunky and gay-disapproving straight guys of the film that are celebrated as everyone’s perfect but unattainable love objects. The film pulls itself in contradictory and unbelievable directions and ultimately pulls itself into pieces.

The gay acting in the film – by a largely straight cast – is hammed up and overdone, and the identical gay triplets of the team manage to be adorable and annoying at the same time. But Jesdaporn Pholdee as Chai, the conflicted and noble lone straight man on the team, gives a restrained but charismatic performance. Vignettes at the end of the film that explain what happened to each character after the volleyball team broke up are arranged out of order and don’t do anything but emphasise how two-dimensional and homogenous the characters are, and how little we came to know any of them. Too much happy-meal Gay Pride bludgeoning in the third act at the expense of solid screenwriting and actual comedy do this otherwise, well, reasonably enjoyable film in.

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The Iron Ladies 2