CANNIBAL TOURS
Australia 1988 | 70 Min. | 35 mm, OmU

This film is a documentary about prostitution, despicting the phenomenon as a metaphor for capitalism and for relationships between men and women in general, and as in this special case on the line between race and culture. GOOD WOMAN OF BANGKOK is also a film about the voyeuristic tendencies inherent in making a film and watching one. When O’Rourke was fourty-three his marriage broke. In the months and years to come, he tried to understand why love can be so banal and profound at the same time. He decided to go to Bangkok, the Mecca for western men with fantasies about exotic sex and love without pain. He wanted to meet a Thai prostitute and to make a film about her. And he wanted to fall in love. As a customer, O’Rourke gets to know Aoi, falls in love with her and stays for a nine-months relationship. Personally involved, O’Rourke offers a view through Aoi’s eyes into her personal situation and how economic circumstances force her and others into prostitution. He wants to help her to escape from that kind of life and offers to buy her and her family a ricefarm. She accepts the offer, but refuses his love. As indicated in the film’s title, O’Rourke aims to tell a parable in Brecht’s sense about the impossibility to live a good life in an unperfect world.