It’s unusual for a Palme d’Or winner to wait this long after Cannes to find to secure a North American distributor — but then, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s death-dreams-and-monkey-ghosts fantasy “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” is a pretty unusual Palme d’Or winner.
You’ll get why it’s such a tough sell when you see it, but that won’t be until spring 2011 for U.S. audiences. It has just been announced that boutique distribution company Strand Releasing — who previously handled Weerasethakul’s features “Tropical Malady,” “Syndromes and a Century” and “Blissfully Yours” — have once again come to the rescue, and will open the film in the quiet half of next year.
Probably the right call: even with the Cannes fanfare, the film is destined to remain an extreme niche item, and would get buried in the late-year crush of more accessible highbrow fare.