The “based on a true story” tag is so often misused in movie advertising that it is practically worthless as marketing — except to those potential viewers who are in search of some fake authenticity. In the Thai film The Iron Ladies, however, the fact that it really is based on a true story makes all the difference.
That is because this tale of a gay and transsexual volleyball team that fights its way to the national finals would be hard to accept if one didn’t know it had a basis in reality — one would be tempted to view it as simply a bizarre fantasy. How close it is to what really happened is difficult to guess, at least in terms of the details, but if you stay until the credits you will see television footage of the real “Iron Ladies”, and you will see, too, that the filmic representation is not very far off.
It seems that for many gay men in Thailand, at least as they are represented in The Iron Ladies, being homosexual means being a kind of a woman, and they slot themselves into the ultra-feminine drag-queen role. Except for one character in this movie, who is still in the closet and seems a very ordinary guy, the volleyball team that comes together is a bunch of the queeniest queens you’ve ever seen, flapping, screeching, deeply concerned with their make-up and their outfits, reduced to sobbing wrecks by broken fingernails.
The film starts with Mon (Sahaphap Tor) being excluded from one volleyball team because he’s obviously gay. Mon, actually, is pretty low-key, especially in contrast to his friend, Jung (Chaicharn Nimpulsawasdi). They join a new volleyball team started by the small and rather dour lesbian Coach Bee (Shiriohana Hongsopon — she is first introduced by the delightful name of Miss Porntip). The team gradually fills up with such characters as the “buffalo queen” Nong (Giorgio Maiocchi), the transsexual performer Pia (Kokkorn Benjathikoon) and a campy trio of apparent triplets, April, May and June. The one remaining straight man on the team is Chai (Jesdaporn Pholdee), who will have to deal with a few of his remaining prejudices in the course of the action.
Despite the unusual constitution of the team, this is still a sports movie. Its basic form is to show the progress of the team towards victory, with match upon match building tension (can they really win?). Then there are of course the stresses between individuals on the team, and the fact that they have to deal with homophobia from others. What they don’t have to deal with is any distraction by the way of sexual or romantic encounters (with the exception of Pia, who’s practically a woman anyway). These may be outrageous queens, but they are the most chaste moffies outside American television.
The Iron Ladies plays out fairly predictably, as a sports movie must, but the fun is in seeing them get there. There are some touching moments, and several amusing ones (including delightful expressions such as “The pay’s as small as an ant’s pussy”). A certain double perspective is required, however, in that we’re clearly expected to laugh at the over-the-top mannerisms and often bizarre actions of the team members (in this respect, they’re treated like an exotic species), but we’re also expected to sympathise and even identify with them. For some audiences, this will be hard (though the film has turned into Thailand’s second-biggest cinematic success ever), and The Iron Ladies doesn’t always get this delicate balance right, but overall it works well enough.
Just don’t go and see it after something big and glossy, or its low-budget simplicity will seem like sheer technical badness. And don’t go if you’re irritated by the singsong cadences of oriental languages like Thai — here, with these queens going on and on, at an even higher pitch than usual, it can begin to wear on the nerves.