麻豆社

Described by its Thai writer/director Apichatpong Weerasthakul as a "memoir of love and pain", Tropical Malady is a film of two very distinctive parts. The first half explores the chaste gay romance between a young soldier Keng (Banlop Lomnoi) and an illiterate country labourer Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee). The second leads us into ghost movie territory: Keng is now in the rain-forest, attempting to track down a shape-shifting beast which has been attacking the local livestock.

Beginning with a quote by a Thai novelist - "All of us are by nature wild beasts. Our duty as human beings is to become like trainers who keep their animals in check" - and drawing on folk stories and shamanic myths, Weerasthakul has fashioned an intriguingly strange work. What is the connection between the gentle love story and the subsequent plunge into a jungle landscape, where reality and dream become forever blurred?

"INTENSE FEELINGS ON THE BRINK OF ERUPTING"

The lushly beautiful Tropical Malady evokes the overwhelming nature of desire: even in the quirky early scenes between the lovers, there's the sense of intense feelings that are on the brink of erupting, and it's after they have licked one another's fingers that Tong silently wanders off into the darkness. Later as Keng's pursuit of his quarry leaves him battered and bruised, he's encouraged by a talking baboon to kill a tiger "to free him from this world or let him devour you to enter his world". The leisurely storytelling may frustrate some viewers, yet this mysterious film succeeds in casting its own sensual spell.

In Thai with English subtitles.