My Girl

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Virgo V @vision Jun 4, 2025 Fan Chan (My Girl) is a 2003 Thai coming-of-age romance comedy film directed by Vitcha Gojiew, Songyos Sugmakanan, Nithiwat Tharathorn, Witthaya Thongyooyong, Anusorn Trisirikasem and Komgrit Triwimol. It was distributed by Hub Ho Hin, Bangkok Company, Limited, Tai Entertainment and GMM Pictures. It stars Charlie Trairat and Focus Jirakul. Fan Chan was released in Indonesia in 2006 as First Love, with a soundtrack dubbed in Indonesian and featuring the country's pop music of the era. In 2023, a five-part documentary series reflecting on the making of the movie, “Remembering Fan Chan: Dream a Dream Again” was released on Netflix. Vision wrote: " The film is a nostalgic look back at the childhood friendship of a boy and a girl growing up in a small town in Thailand in the 1980s, featuring a soundtrack of Thai pop music of the era. It was the debut film of six young Thai directors. Comical. Sad but enjoyable. Admire the advancement in Thai storytelling skills. Love the mocking scene. A great spin on tradition and reality. Admire the take on growing up in urban Thailand. Admire the songs, especially with the child stars singing in them. Memorable performances by Charlie Trairat as Jeab, Focus Jirakul as Noi-Naa and Chaleumpol Tikumpornteerawong as Jack. Four and a half fries!" See more Aug 23, 2014 By far the best of the many Thai films I have seen, this will utterly astonish anyone expecting the melodrama and poor acting so often encountered in Thai cinema. As even by the standards of the latter, its budget was low, it shows in the tradition of which The Bicycle Thieves is perhaps the most spectacular example, that with fine acting and masterful direction, depiction of the emotions in a simple story can trump a budget of any size. A young man called Jeap is invited to the wedding of his long-lost childhood friend Noi-Naa. His initial decision to give precedence to a prior engagement is soon abandoned when in his car he listens to the musical hits of his childhood and memories flood back in the way old music is perhaps uniquely powerful in making them do. Most of the story then focuses on Jeap as a ten-year-old agonisingly torn between the super-girlish circle of his oldest friend and neighbour Noi-Naa and a gang of characterful boys led by an amiably-roguish fat bully called Jack. Extremely nostalgic and wittily recounted, it is definitely a story to make one both laugh and cry. The acting is superb. The title and cover are misleading. Touching as the deeply-felt friendship of Jeap and Noi-Naa is, Fan Chan is not a romance, but a story about friendships and their meaning in the emotional world of the pre-pubescent boy. The idea of its being romantic is actually deeply ironic, for what it does perhaps most convincingly and interestingly is to remind us of a truth that was obvious to everyone until a generation or two ago: that beyond his mother's love, a boy's needs until well into adolescence are for his own sex. Nowadays this tends to be obscured by contrived gender-blindness combined with a silly and uncomfortably half-hearted wish to see children prematurely aping their parents' romantic antics. Unfortunately, the full mind-blowing emotional impact will only be felt by those with nostalgic memories of the lost simplicity of rural Thailand in the 1980s, and especially those who were children then. These above all accounted for its being the extraordinary and unexpected local hit it was, but even with its impact diluted, it fully deserves a global audience. Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a novel of boyhood, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112 See more Mar 13, 2010 A sweet and endearing story about first love and childhood, this Thai film is just about perfect - it doesn't resort to cheap melodrama and leaves you with a bittersweet end. Must see! See more Jan 25, 2010 Pretty charming film.. It brings back sweet childhood memories. See more Jan 24, 2010 you are really good movie as loved and sad // Monazloveyou See more Nov 11, 2009 This has to be one of the best films I've seen in a while. Such a simple story, but made so brilliantly. So apparently the six filmmakers who created this were uni students - outstanding! Loved the story, loved the characters, loved the music. I almost don't want to review this because of how much I enjoyed it. I've almost no reason for giving this 4 1/2 stars... No. I've changed my mind. 5 stars. See more Read all reviews

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