Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul delights in being enigmatic, and this tribute to his medic parents is no more fathomable than Blissfully Yours or Tropical Malady. But there’s something more accessible and seductive about this treatise on time, memory and the Buddhist notions of identity and reincarnation.
The action is divided into two segments, the first set in a rural clinic and centring on the gentle routine of Nantarat Sawaddikul, the second in an antiseptic city hospital, with Jaruchai Iamaram distracted from his case-load by his yuppie girlfriend. But a link is provided by eccentric monks and the paradox that love somehow persists in our impersonal world.