听 User Rating 
The blandness of Australian soaps is matched only by the exuberance and invention of its big screen comedies. The best of them, like "Muriel's Wedding" and "Strictly Ballroom", fashion their laughs from the neediness and desire of their characters and so, even when the humour becomes wonderfully, attractively absurd (which it usually does), there is always a real foundation to give the film a serious, emotional layer. "Siam Sunset" is the latest of this ilk.
It concerns Perry, a decent but anxious young man who acts as if a curse has been placed on him because at best accidents, and at worst, disasters follow him around. He feels boxed in, claustrophobic, threatened, out of control, as if an unseen hand is moving him around a giant chessboard (Australia) for that other person's amusement. As he has created colours for an English paint company, he comes to believe that if he finds that special colour called Siam Sunset he will be saved. The colour comes to symbolise his own inadequacy and his desire for perfection in a world full of ghastly people and chemical food. He experiences both on a bus ride across Australia and hooks up with a troubled girl who is just as desperate as himself.
After a series of disasters is piled on too quickly by over-enthusiastic director John Polson, the film settles down and various elements which make up Perry's engaging, confused character begin to lead the drama. The comedy then has somewhere to go. British actor Linus Roache ("The Wings of the Dove", "Priest") has no trouble covering the complexity of Perry, while the supporting cast (usually representing the mediocrity and awfulness of the world) are nearly always good for a laugh.
