“Tropical Malady” Is The Haunting Thai Gay Romance That Bewitched Cannes 20 Years Ago
As the 79th Cannes Film Festival rolls out along the French Riviera this week, it is worth pulling one of the most spellbinding queer films the festival has ever crowned back into the light. Tropical Malady, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2004 and became the first Thai film to play the main competition.
Two decades later, it still feels like nothing else in queer cinema.
A love story split in half
The film follows Keng, a soldier played by Banlop Lomnoi, and Tong, a country boy played by Sakda Kaewbuadee. They meet in a small rural town and fall into a quiet, tender affair. Their courtship plays out in small moments.
A trip to the cinema. A ride on the back of a motorbike. An afternoon hunting for stones a local legend swears will turn into gemstones.
There is longing under every glance and very little dialogue to spell it out. Then Tong walks off into the jungle, Keng’s regiment moves on, and the film resets.
The jungle takes over
The second half is where Tropical Malady tips into something stranger. Using the same two actors, Weerasethakul retells a Thai folk myth.
A soldier hunts a tiger shaman who can take human form, and the two stalk each other through the dark until the soldier surrenders his soul. Sound, image and silence do most of the talking.
It plays less like a sequel and more like the spiritual echo of the romance we just watched. Queer desire stops being a quiet glance at the movies and becomes a fable about giving yourself over completely.
Booed, then crowned
The Cannes premiere was famously divisive. Several critics walked out, some who stayed booed it, and Variety and The Hollywood Reporter filed cool reviews. The jury, chaired by Quentin Tarantino, ignored all of that and handed it the Jury Prize anyway.
The film has aged better than its press screening. The British Film Institute ranked it the sixth-best LGBTQIA+ film of all time in its 2016 poll, and Sight And Sound logged it twice in 2022, placing 62nd in the directors’ Greatest Films of All Time poll and 95th in the critics’ poll.
Where to watch it
At DNA, we keep coming back to films that ask their audience to slow down and sit with their feelings, and this one rewards every minute. Tropical Malady is currently streaming on Kanopy.
Have you ever let a film completely overtake you the way this one demands? If you have not, this is the week to try, while Cannes is still on and queer cinema is having its annual spotlight.
