Tropical Malady

One day, cattle in the region are slaughtered by a wild animal, and Tong disappears. Keng ventures alone into the tropical jungle to find him. 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tropical Malady, 2004, 118 min, 35mm, colour, original version with French subtitles Thailand / France / Italy / Germany  
With Banlop Lomnoi, Sakda Kaewbuadee  
Jury Prize, 2004 Cannes Film Festival 

"The film is the story of a metamorphosis, and it is metamorphosis itself. [...] Through its deliberately rambling and dismembered form, the film uses the power exclusive to cinema (sophisticated sound production, framing, breathtakingly beautiful photography) to create an interregnum in which the physical bleeds into the spiritual, mixes up the order of things and causes everything to tip over into chaos, breaking up relationships between the elements. The hedonistic gay idyll of the beginning transforms into a mythological battle full of anguish, the cloth tiger leaping up and tearing apart the unfortunate man it meets on its path to royalty, the jungle becoming a putrid cathedral that uses the voice of a monkey to demand its blood tribute, in honour of a god that promises nothing. It’s a film that makes you dizzy..." Didier Péron, Libération, 19 May 2024.