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      Tropical Malady

      Released Jun 29, 2005 1 hr. 58 min. Drama Romance List
      80% 50 Reviews Tomatometer 77% 1,000+ Ratings Audience Score Keng (Banlop Lomnoi) is a soldier stationed in a quiet Thai village where the days progress with methodical slowness. Not much happens of interest until Keng encounters local boy Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee), and the pair begin a tentative romance. Then, in a surreal move typical of director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the film splinters into a story about a soldier (also Lomnoi) searching for a lost boy in the jungle and meeting a vexing spirit (also Kaewbuadee). Read More Read Less
      Tropical Malady

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      Critics Consensus

      Tropical Malady forsakes straight narrative lines and easy answers in favor of an utterly unique drama that leaves a lingering, dreamlike impact.

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      Audience Reviews

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      Tom F As an aspiring film snob I appreciate what they are going for, but it never fully clicked for me. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 04/19/24 Full Review Yellowfur D The environment in the first half is very noisy, and the footage is a bit fragmented. If "Memoria" is an experimental concert, the first half of "Tropical Malady" is like a Northeastern stew. In the second half of the story about the tiger, the director's personal style gradually emerged, with mystical stories, illustrations, and narration, but there was a bit too much explanation. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/02/24 Full Review Ekaterina P With a genuine excitement about a movie hailed as a striking and engrossing experience, not least in the LGBTQIA+ genre, I was ultimately let down by the filmmaking itself. Even if the idea might have been fine, the two halves of the movie were difficult to reconcile. I also found the sound design and mixing to be on the lower end - you could barely hear the dialogue, and most of the sound was pretty much just crickets chirping. Of course, this adds to the overall ambiance of the jungle depicted so heavily in the movie but I missed an even slightly more crisp experience. However, the love story was refreshingly unproblematic and undramatic to me. Usually, we have to deal with quite a lot of intensity when watching an LGBTQIA+ work of art, but in this case, it went by mildly like a gentle spring breeze. You might say that the dramatic part of the story unfolds in the second, feverish part of the film, but it doesn't hit you over the head with a dark thematic. It won the Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival in 2004, but I doubt that this has withstood the test of time. The film doesn't require much from its audience, but it is choppy and uncomfortable at best. Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 09/28/23 Full Review Taylor L Just your average romance told via a hunter staring down a phantom tiger. Yet another slow-burn, minimalist, highly allegorical drama that has received global acclaim... that I didn't really connect to. There's a threshold where avant-garde crosses into pointless pretentiousness for me, and this film is clearly well past it, with its very sensory tale of love heavily infused with influences of the natural world. Very prominently mixes reality with the supernatural and dreamlike. The first part of this film is actually quite appealing, a homosexual love story that has sparing dialogue and uses inching emotional resonance, where characters develop familiarity based around just more or less existing in close proximity to one another. But the second part, where the relationship is completely altered to embrace a bit of legendary folklore, fell completely flat for me; at one point I might have sat in awe at the pieces I didn't understand and think about how it must have been my own shortcomings that left me in the dark, and applaud without comprehending. Now, I just accept that there are attributes of films that don't hit the mark for me, such as the slow-burning parallels between obsession and nature's yearning that Apichatpong Weerasethakul has crafted. (3/5) Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/06/23 Full Review j s This movie gives me hope. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review david l Tropical Malady is representative of everything that is wrong with Arichatpong Weerasethakul as a director. His movies are simply impenetrable to the general audiences as the glacial pacing and the strange nature of his stories, or lack thereof, require an acquired taste to appreciate them. This film certainly has a wonderfully dreamlike quality to its atmosphere and imagery and the fable feel of the second half was intriguing, but most of it was too tedious and esoteric for me personally. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

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      Tropical Malady

      A scene from the film TROPICAL MALADY directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A scene from the film TROPICAL MALADY directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A scene from the film TROPICAL MALADY directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A scene from the film TROPICAL MALADY directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A scene from the film TROPICAL MALADY directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A scene from the film TROPICAL MALADY directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A scene from the film TROPICAL MALADY directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A scene from the film TROPICAL MALADY directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. View more photos

      Critics Reviews

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      Kent Jones Film Comment Magazine Image for image, this hour-long stretch provided the Cannes competition with its most rarefied and ravishing experience. Apr 11, 2018 Full Review Empire Magazine Rated: 4/5 Apr 1, 2006 Full Review Nick Schager Lessons of Darkness As stylistically striking as it is adventurous. Rated: A- Dec 20, 2005 Full Review Dennis Harvey 48 Hills Indeed, that magically strange mix of implied romantic attraction between two men and mystic happenings in a jungle—with only minimal connection between the two elements—may remain his most indelible achievement... Mar 15, 2023 Full Review Vadim Rizov Filmmaker Magazine Tropical Malady used subtitles to impose a narrative on nighttime nature footage of monkeys; this pauses its main Crusoe narrative about 15 minutes in to shift attention over to inherently comical goats... Feb 16, 2023 Full Review Jason Shawhan Nashville Scene There’s a truth about the relationship between affection, infatuation and obsession that Tropical Malady radiates but never makes a point of emphasizing. Aug 8, 2022 Full Review Read all reviews

      Movie Info

      Synopsis Keng (Banlop Lomnoi) is a soldier stationed in a quiet Thai village where the days progress with methodical slowness. Not much happens of interest until Keng encounters local boy Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee), and the pair begin a tentative romance. Then, in a surreal move typical of director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the film splinters into a story about a soldier (also Lomnoi) searching for a lost boy in the jungle and meeting a vexing spirit (also Kaewbuadee).
      Director
      Apichatpong Weerasethakul
      Executive Producer
      Olivier Aknin
      Screenwriter
      Apichatpong Weerasethakul
      Distributor
      Strand Releasing
      Production Co
      Downtown Pictures
      Genre
      Drama, Romance
      Original Language
      Thai
      Release Date (Theaters)
      Jun 29, 2005, Original
      Release Date (DVD)
      Nov 1, 2005
      Box Office (Gross USA)
      $46.7K
      Sound Mix
      Dolby SRD
      Aspect Ratio
      Flat (1.85:1)