Behind the Painting (Khang Lang Phap) is a movie heavy on romance and melodrama. Surprisingly, it is very effective.
Kirati (Kara Polasit) is a pretty young lady from the royal family in Thailand who despairs about never being married. As she grows older, her frustration increases and she marries Chaokoon (Art-Ong Jumsai Na Ayudhya), a businessman who is old enough to be her father. She realises it's not love, but she devotes herself to him.
Kirati's feelings are thrown into conflict when she runs into Nipporn (Theeradej Wongpuapan), who is entrusted to take care of her by Chaokoon. They both fall in love with each other and while Nipporn is not shy about expressing his feelings, Kirati stays true to her moral compass.
Years pass and Kirati's husband falls ill with tuberculosis and dies, while she stays by his side, exposing herself to the dangerous disease. She is then free, but Nipporn, whose heart has been hurt too much, resigns himself to a life without love and marries another lady. Kirati loses her will to live and as her condition deteriorates, her thoughts turn to Nipporn who finally realises his folly and spends her last remaining days with her.
I have seen too many movies like this one, and even though I thought a signification portion of the movie dragged I thought parts were thought-provoking. The theme is that when you settle for something other than what you really want, then you end up risking everything. This is not to say that Kirati should have broken her marriage, but that she should never have married in the first place (I grant that the situation was totally fabricated considering how attractive she is). Likewise, Nipporn should have realised the outcome and waited, but instead chose to settle to ease his pain.
If movies like Titanic where two star-crossed lovers are destined to not be together appeal to you, you have to check this out. Director Cherd Songsri certainly knows how to pull one's emotional strings. It even had me in tears.