Feature film
The Snake King's Wife
ពស់កេងកង
Tea Lim Koun · 1970
Synopsis
While her husband is away, a peasant woman, Neang Ni, yields to a giant serpent who calls himself king of the serpents and promises to help her family. When she finds herself pregnant, her jealous husband kills the serpent and then kills her in turn, and hundreds of little snakes escape from her belly; only one survives. Taken in by a hermit who gives him human form, he becomes a handsome young man, Veasna, and falls in love with Soriya, the daughter of a rich man, whom her stepmother's intrigues have driven from home.
Context
The film opens with a half-hour prologue, then interweaves several stories and changes hero several times, up to the witch with whom the stepmother makes an alliance. It brings together Dy Saveth, the most famous Khmer actress of the time, and Chea Yuthorn, whom the film made popular in Thailand, and its commercial success was considerable in Cambodia as in all of Southeast Asia. The long version, of one hundred and sixty-four minutes, shown at the Berlinale Forum in 2012, made the narrative mastery of its author apparent, along with the eroticism, frank for the period, that contributed to its success.
Who it is for
For those who like fantastic tales and popular horror cinema, somewhere between magic, melodrama and sensuality.
Prizes and reception
The Berlinale regards it as the best-known film of the Cambodian golden age abroad, and Khmer audiences would see it again three or four times.
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