Movies like Tropical Malady (2004)
The best movies like Tropical Malady (2004) are Cemetery of Splendor (2015), Blissfully Yours (2002) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010). If Tropical Malady hooked you with its drama and romance, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedIn the Mood for Love (2000)8.1/10 from 3,461 votes
- NewestWhat Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021)Released 2021
Cemetery of Splendor (2015)
In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & fantasy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlissfully Yours (2002)
In Thailand, an illegal immigrant from Myanmar with a mysterious skin rash, his girlfriend, and her friend visit the doctor's before spending the afternoon on individual and collective adventures.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisUncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Suffering from a kidney disease and sure of his death, Uncle Boonmee assembles his relatives in the countryside. He reminisces about his past lives and plans to visit a place before dying.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & fantasy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSyndromes and a Century (2006)
A story about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's parents who were both doctors, and his memories of growing up in a hospital environment.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHappy Together (1997)
A couple travels from Hong Kong to Argentina to revive their relationship but experience turbulence when both men's lives drift in separate directions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSupernatural (2014)
Science fiction about a future Thailand. Futuristic, experimental, homo-erotic and with elements of a political essay. With a richness of themes and impressions that wouldn't get past the censor in Thailand. The maker doesn't mince his words and isn't afraid to look reality in the eye.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Jan Dara (2001)
Jan is a boy growing up in 1930s Siam in a wealthy, dysfunctional family where sex has a huge impact on everyone's lives. Jan is viewed by his father as cursed, since his mother died giving birth to him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisMysterious Object at Noon (2000)
A camera crew travels through Thailand asking villagers to invent the next chapter of an ever-growing story.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPornographer: Playback (2021)
Kijima and Kuzumi, showing the problems they face as they try to move forward in their lives, and how they drift apart while still yearning to be together. A story of love and life, and fantasies and failures of a novelist and his lover.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
In the Mood for Love (2000)
In 1960s Hong Kong, two neighbors form an intimate bond after making a discovery about their spouses in this visually stunning tale of unrequited love.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisUncontrolled Love (2016)
Xie Yan adopts Shu Nian as a child, but after years apart, old feelings resurface, forcing Xie to confront his true emotions despite the obstacles.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Stranger by the Lake (2013)
Franck spends his summer days hopelessly searching for companionship at a popular cruising spot on the shores of a lake in rural France. One day, he meets Michel, an attractive yet darkly mysterious man and falls blindly in love.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSweet Boy (2016)
Lonely and living with his hardworking single mom, a studious teen begins to grasp the ideas of sex and his sexuality until a stranger makes a move.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
The Male Gaze: Nocturnal Instincts (2021)
Strap yourself in for an exhilarating journey into darkness with these five award-winning short films from across the globe that delve into heart-pumping escapades varying from the intensely erotic to the ultra-violent to the warm-inside feels. The night has never looked so inviting. Segments: After Dawn [Passée l'aube] (2017), Poof (2018), Spiral (2018), Night of Love (2018), Floating Melon [浮果] (2015).
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Dear Dakanda (2005)
Recovering from an accident, an artist is torn between the nurse who is helping him recover and a college friend for whom he secretly longs.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001)
When a dying friend tells out-of-work salaryman Yosuke about a hidden treasure, he sets off in search of the only clue about its location: a house by a red bridge. What he finds instead is a woman who transcends all his fantasies.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both fantasy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWeekend (2011)
After a drunken house party with his straight mates, Russell heads out to a gay club. Just before closing time he picks up Glen but what's expected to be just a one-night stand becomes something else, something special.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlue Is the Warmest Color (2013)
Adèle's life is changed when she meets Emma, a young woman with blue hair, who will allow her to discover desire, to assert herself as a woman and as an adult. In front of others, Adele grows, seeks herself, loses herself, finds herself.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDoes the Flower Bloom? (2018)
While on a work trip, 37-year-old Sakurai meets 19-year-old art student Yoichi in a quiet, charming house—sparking an unexpected connection across generations.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021)
In the Georgian riverside town of Kutaisi, summertime romance and World Cup fever are in the air. After a pair of chance encounters, pharmacist Lisa and soccer player Giorgi find their plans for a date undone when they both awaken magically transformed with no way to recognize each other.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLong Day's Journey Into Night (2018)
Luo Hongwu returns to Kaili, the hometown from which he fled many years ago. He begins the search for the woman he loved and whom he has never been able to forget.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPastoral: To Die in the Country (1974)
A director faces creative block while working on his latest film – a reimagination of his adolescence growing up in a mountain village in rural Japan.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both fantasy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Dreamers (2003)
When Isabelle and Theo invite Matthew to stay with them, what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and everything is possible.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTwo Drifters (2005)
After breaking up with her boyfriend, a woman named Odete descends into madness and claims to be pregnant with the child of her neighbour Pedro, who died in a car crash and is mourned by his boyfriend Rui.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGod's Own Country (2017)
A young farmer in rural Yorkshire numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both romance & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJan Dara: The Beginning (2012)
Jan, a young boy, grows up without a mother and is often insulted by his father. He struggles with his life as he longs to be with several women, even Madame Boonleung, his father's lover.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisJan Dara: The Finale (2013)
As a grown up, Jan recounts the abuse he experienced as a young boy at the hands of his sadistic father, Luang Wissanandacha. He decides to seek revenge and depose him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & romance
The Long Walk (2019)
An old Laotian hermit discovers that the ghost of a road accident victim can transport him back in time fifty years to the moment of his mother's painful death.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
The Ornithologist (2016)
Stranded along a sublime river fjord in northern Portugal, an ornithologist is subjected to a series of brutal and erotic Stations-of-the-Cross-style tests.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJumbo (2020)
Jeanne, a shy young woman, works as a night guard at an amusement park and has a close relationship with her mother. While no man can compete with this opposed duo, Jeanne begins to develop strange romantic feelings for Jumbo, the latest attraction at the theme park...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both fantasy & romance
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Tropical Malady?
The closest matches to Tropical Malady are Cemetery of Splendor (2015), Blissfully Yours (2002) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Tropical Malady?
People who watched Tropical Malady most often go on to Cemetery of Splendor (2015), Blissfully Yours (2002) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010).
What is the highest-rated movie like Tropical Malady?
In the Mood for Love (2000), rated 8.1/10 by 3,461 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Tropical Malady?
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to Tropical Malady chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Tropical Malady, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.