Photo: Sakda Kaewbuadee as Tong and Banlop Lomnoi as Keng in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady
There's a scene in David O. Russell's intermittingly brilliant I Heart Huckabees where Dustin Hoffman's existential detective likens a bed sheet to the tissue that connects the world around us. In Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's more successfully evokes an existential fiber between sexual desire and cultural mythos in the pastoral jungle outside a Thai village when a young soldier, Keng (Banlop Lomnoi), falls in love with a country boy, Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee). Weerasethakul's metaphysical fascination with ordinary human gestures and the shape of everyday objects colors Keng and Tong's unpretentious, bittersweet courtship. Keng gives Tong a Clash tape but forgets to give him his heart, and when Keng attempts to transplant his love for Tong via a simple gesticulation of his arm, the transfusion of Keng's cosmic-romantic energy is ravishingly felt in the director's enchanted compositions. Ed Gonzalez
There's a scene in David O. Russell's intermittingly brilliant I Heart Huckabees where Dustin Hoffman's existential detective likens a bed sheet to the tissue that connects the world around us. In Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's more successfully evokes an existential fiber between sexual desire and cultural mythos in the pastoral jungle outside a Thai village when a young soldier, Keng (Banlop Lomnoi), falls in love with a country boy, Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee). Weerasethakul's metaphysical fascination with ordinary human gestures and the shape of everyday objects colors Keng and Tong's unpretentious, bittersweet courtship. Keng gives Tong a Clash tape but forgets to give him his heart, and when Keng attempts to transplant his love for Tong via a simple gesticulation of his arm, the transfusion of Keng's cosmic-romantic energy is ravishingly felt in the director's enchanted compositions. Ed Gonzalez
