Blissfully, Tropical Malady in New York

Blissfully Yours is playing on general release in New York. John Anderson of Newsday has a nice capsule review:

Like a rose breaching a cracked sidewalk, Thai film keeps pushing its way into the constricted field of world cinema, mixing corruption and innocence in a way perhaps only Thailand can. Or does. The country's current chefs d'oeuvre include Pen-Ek Ratanaruang of the recent Last Life in the Universe and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose virtually impenetrable Tropical Malady is part of this year's New York Film Fest. It's a far more lucid Weerasethakul on display in 2003's Blissfully Yours, which sets up its characters in a series of sordid, pedestrian scams that are meant to represent urban Thai life in general, and then segues to the countryside and a kind of Edenic parable that poses its principal trio - the middle-aged hustler Orn (Jenjira Jansuda), the young female Roong (Kanokporn Tongoram) and the hunky Burmese rustic, Min (Min Oo) - in a "what if" scenario of unblemished perfection. Poetic and rhythmically confident, "Blissfully Yours" is a subtle seduction.

As Anderson mentioned, Apichatpong's Tropical Malady is at the New York Film Festival, the only Thai entry as far as I can tell. Here's what the festival's website says about it:

There may be no more beguilingly mysterious film this year than the Festival debut of the lavishly gifted Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Leaving Bangkok for the seemingly peaceful Thai countryside, the story begins as a conventional, if marvelously achieved, love story between a young soldier and a young man from the country. But just when we've gotten comfortable with Apichatpong's tender account of two men falling for each other (including one startlingly erotic moment), he launches us into the realm of myth and legend, in which human and animal join together in a fantastic union. As formally audacious as it is visually stunning, this strikingly original work reminds us that when we wander the forests of love we encounter the most unexpected of creatures.

Also of interest at the festival is a Shaw Brothers retrospective. A thread on Rotten Tomatoes Critics' Discussion is devoted to this.