Main cast: Sunwinit Panjamawat (Young Janrai), Eakarat Sarsukh (Adult Janrai), Khun Luang (Santisuk Promsiri), Aunt Waad (Vipavee Charoenpura), Kaew (Pataravin Timkul), and Christy Chung (Khun Boonlueang)
Director: Nonzee Nimbitur

Overhyped as an erotic period drama and a showcase for Chinese sexpot Christy Chung’s breasts, Jan Dara is all your usual morality crap masquerading as a sex drama. You know, Westernized sluts are bad, sex is bad, people who have sex will be punished – or more specifically, women who have sex will be punished, et cetera.

Based on a novel, this story is about Janrai, whose name means “cursed” because his mother died giving birth to him. His daddy hates him but has sex with Jan’s nanny before him. You wish you have a Daddy this cool, huh? Daddy also beats Jan up and down. When Jan is seventeen, Daddy marries a second wife (he already has a wife). This wife is a Westernized woman, Khun Boonlueang. You know how Westernized women are, right? That’s right – they’re all sluts. All they care about sex. They have sex for fun. Boonlueang sleeps with Jan as well as Jan’s stepsister, and by this token, Jan gets “corrupted”.

Jan gets kicked out of the house when his stepsister accuses him for raping her. He grows up to be a woman-hating abuser, and he comes back for revenge.

By then I am sedated into bored stupefaction by the mechanical sex scenes, the tedious and shallow psychology (blame everything on Westernized sluts), and lousy acting (the guy who plays young Jan is out-acted by the trees in the background).