Opening

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Tropical Malady

Tropical Malady (2005)

tomatometer

77

Average Rating: 7/10
Critic Reviews: 13
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 3

No consensus yet.

audience

75

liked it
Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 1,721

My Rating

Movie Info

One of Thailand's leading experimental filmmakers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul directed this ambitious examination of fear and desire. Keng (Banlop Lomnoi) is a soldier who has been assigned duty as a forest ranger in the woodlands of the country. While on duty, he meets a young man named Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee); Keng becomes deeply infatuated with Tong, but while Tong is friendly with Keng, he is obviously unwilling to respond to his romantic overtures. As Keng deals with his disappointment, he

Nov 1, 2005

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All Critics (46) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (34) | Rotten (10) | DVD (4)

The film evolves into something deeper, a story about the atavistic wildness within people.

September 2, 2005 Full Review Source: Washington Post
Washington Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

For an exquisite taste of sensory cinema, look no further.

August 19, 2005 Full Review Source: Seattle Times
Seattle Times
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Some fantasy films make the leap from reality to reverie relatively seamlessly, hopscotching between the two states without leaving the audience behind. Tropical Malady is not one of those.

August 18, 2005 Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
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Tropical Malady is the work of a visionary fabulist.

July 21, 2005 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
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An intriguing emotional and intellectual puzzle that made me feel exhilarated and contemplative.

July 15, 2005 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It's not the kind of movie you simply leave behind in the theater. It will follow you home, leaving only a trail of soft, invisible paw prints.

July 5, 2005 Full Review Source: Salon.com
Salon.com
Top Critic IconTop Critic

What initially appears a vague and meandering plot line is actually our introduction into a sort of dream state where nothing is what it seems on the surface.

May 5, 2010 Full Review Source: East Bay Express
East Bay Express

Humid transcendence

September 5, 2009 Full Review Source: CinePassion
CinePassion

Camera work in the first half of 'Tropical Malady' appears jumpy and interrupted by confusing cuts and artsy tricks.

July 12, 2009 Full Review Source: ReelTalk Movie Reviews
ReelTalk Movie Reviews

Maintains a visual richness, but loses its way with heavy-going forays into mythology and mysticism.

March 1, 2007 Full Review Source: Film Journal International
Film Journal International

The most original film I've seen in years.

April 24, 2006 Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

The division of the two halves is pronounced and disruptive ... but the filmmaking is assured and focused, reaching for abstraction and poetry.

January 2, 2006 Full Review Source: Window to the Movies
Window to the Movies

A weird, gorgeous and disorienting act of exploration

December 23, 2005 Full Review Source: culturevulture.net
culturevulture.net

As stylistically striking as it is adventurous.

December 20, 2005 Full Review Source: Lessons of Darkness
Lessons of Darkness

Here are some more adjectives you can add to the disc's cover art: beautiful, elegiac, profound, and mythical.

November 3, 2005 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine

A hypnotic head-scratcher that manages to be oddly fascinating and frustratingly tedious at the same time. Eventually, though, tedium wins.

September 19, 2005
Salt Lake Tribune

It goes from a love story in the making to the mystical realm of legends where men can be transformed into wild beasts and monkey guides offer sage advice.

September 18, 2005 Full Review Source: TheMovieChicks.com

It's as if two completely different movies got spliced together in the editing room, or in the projection booth.

September 16, 2005 Full Review Source: Deseret News, Salt Lake City | Comment (1)
Deseret News, Salt Lake City

A film more textural than narrative, it's for viewers willing to lose themselves in a truly sensual jungle experience.

August 18, 2005 Full Review Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Audience Reviews for Tropical Malady

Two different stories in tone and narrative combined in the same film: first a naturalist, bucolic gay romance, then a mysterious, enigmatic tale of spirits in a dense forest. Even if creating an absorbing sensorial atmosphere, the whole feels loosely bound together, allowing of infinite interpretations and thus appearing vague and empty in its core.
October 8, 2011
blacksheepboy

Super Reviewer

Tropical Malady is a state of mind. It is a film that forces you to go into some weird kind of trancelike state. Easy to watch it ain't. It is dmeanding, long, even too long in my opinion and has a tricky way to tell it's complex story. In many ways this works as much as ghost story as it works as a romantic drama. For the first half this film is quite straightforward film about two men and their romance. It shows us pieces of their daily life and moments they share together, but then in the middle of the film something truly weird happens and it all turns into eerie story with seriously creepy twist. Director Weerasethakul is clearly the most interesting director talent to come from Thailand, but for me his films feel a bit too distant and cold. They are mood pieces, but ultimately they seem to be films about nothing. Strange films they certainly are and oddly fascinating too.
December 29, 2010
emilkakko

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Tropical Malady (DE)
  • Tropical Malady (Sud Pralad) (UK)
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