The first half of Thai protégé Apichatpong Weerasethakul's second feature film leisurely observes a budding romance between a soldier and a country boy. With little narrative drive, the two men meet, take walks, visit caves, listen to old women tell stories, and, in a climactic moment, smell each others' fingers. The apparent aimlessness is purposeful . In the second half, "Tropical Malady" moves past the merely leisurely into the territory of the dreamy and bizarre.
For the last hour, we watch the soldier walk through the jungle, afraid of a mysterious monster, some kind of unseen shapeshifting shaman.There are disapperances, ancient stories, monkeys with dire warnings, but "Tropical Malady" is no "Blair Witch Project" in the jungle: in artfully composed shots, time passes and not much happens at all. The deliberate pace and endless nature noises might lure you into a quick nap, and perhaps that's even intended. At the border between the real and the imagined, the present and persistent memories, legend and the mundane, Weerasethakul is balancing the fertile and mysterious with the out-and-out boring, and somehow, it works.
