Tropical Malady (2004)

👍👍
Reviewed 31 Aug 2025

A dyad about love as creative and destructive, self-projecting and -effacing, greedy and giving; also about difficulties and alienation when love is sunken under social expectations. So many different ways to interpret the halves: a “real” story and then a “realer than real” re-telling; a myth reflected in the mundane; two separate tales that thematically inform one another; a didactic demonstration of how to tell the same story in different idioms (a la TTRPG hacks)… I think it rewards the patient watcher and has a sublime finale, but its languid pace and low-key naturalism may turn others away.