15 Essential Movies For LGBT* Pride Month
7. Tropical Malady
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady was the writer-director's second film to find success at the Cannes Film Festival, and the first to explore his own homosexuality through the medium of cinema. It also secured his place on the international scene and consolidated the new emerging Thai film industry on a global scale.
A film of two halves, the first part concerned with a burgeoning gay romance between two men and the second concerning a lost soldier wandering through the woods, it marks the preoccupation of several themes which would come to dominate Weerasethakul's work. The realm of dreams, the spiritual life and sexuality merge in a langorously paced drama replete with reserved imagery.
If you're expecting a strong narrative and heavy dialogue, Tropical Malady will no doubt disappoint; instead, what the film offers is a stream of elusive images in the best tradition of slow cinema and an underlying strangeness which gets under your skin like a vaguely recalled but powerful dream.