I love these two. Tropical Malady
There s this one shot at the beginning of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul s masterfully sexy Cannes Jury Prize-winning film
Tropical Malady that lives in my head rent-free. Here s the shot.
The camera is still and focused on a naked man with a fat ass. The man (or maybe he s a ghost, it s hard to be sure with Weerasethakul) steps across a plain. The plain touches a forest s edge. This song plays. Nothing much happens, but the shot is paradoxical: it s bleak and lush, ominous and sweet, regretful and proud. It becomes a rubric for the next two hours, in which Weerasethakul tells two unique but parallel stories. The first is romantic and gay, and the second is mythical and ghostly.
A duck lives on top of the Whitneys refrigerator, and a rooster joins them at breakfast, and there are frogs and dogs here and there in the house. But when Dad brings home a baby seal, their lives really take on a shape and purpose.
They live in a rambling spread up on the hill over the Maine fishing town where Dad is the harbor master, and people talk about them behind their backs. There is a way in which old-timers with Maine accents can say He s got a seal for a pet that lets you know they are not simply imparting information.