Tropical Malady (2004)

"If there's a new direction in store for cinema in the 21st century, 'Joe' is leading the way."—Time Out

Tonight Joe introduces the ravishing Tropical Malady, winner of the Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. A Q&A with the director follows the screening. When Tropical Malady debuted at Cannes this year, Film Comment critic Kent Jones wrote that it "provided theÖcompetition with its most rarefied and ravishing experience." The film explores the passionate relationship between two men, telling two stories to do so. The first focuses on a soldier, Keng, attracted to a villager, Tong, who works in an ice-cutting plant, and on the process of their love affair.

As their burgeoning romance is about to peak, the second story is launched: Keng is ordered into the jungle to track an unseen wild beast thought to be preying on livestock. The shocking shift in tone introduces a haunting ghost story in which a terrified Keng goes on the trail of the beast, which is both a real tiger and a shaman able to assume the tiger's form. "The final sequence, semi-dark and all but silent, recalls Apocalypse Now, but with a dark and hallucinatory twist—a beautiful and strange film," notes the Guardian. (118 mins.)

Still in his early 30s, Joe was born in a small city in northeast Thailand and studied film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Two of his three feature-length films have won top prizes at Cannes Film Festivals, an accomplishment all the more remarkable in light of their highly experimental nature.

Thanks to Marcus Hu, Strand Releasing, and Sakeson Sarobol, Royal Thai Consulate, Los Angeles, for assistance with this series.


support credits

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's artist residency presented with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wexner Center Residency Award program.

Season support provided by the Rohauer Collection Foundation and the Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation.

Contemporary films, international films, and visiting filmmakers presented with support from the Ohio Arts Council.