An odd and wise meditation

Zenlike in its mix of the serene and the wise, the whimsical and the jarringly odd, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May, is a beautiful, slow-moving meditation on life, death, and relationships that transcend time and space.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Thai director whose experimental fusions of fiction and documentary have won a passionate following in international cinema circles, opens Uncle Boonmee with a dreamlike excursion into the woods, where a water buffalo lopes in the dark. Later, there are sequences in a cave, and a mystical interspecies sexual coupling by a waterfall (OK, it's a princess and a catfish) - the imagery is rich with symbols of myth, of Jung.

Uncle Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) is dying, he has kidney failure, he's returned to his farm in the country to be with friends and family. Some of those friends and family - his wife, for one - are long dead, but that doesn't stop them from appearing, to recall old times, to rue mistakes, to share small joys. There's even a hairy black beast with coal-red eyes: a monkey ghost, a creature at once comic, like something from a cheesy '50s monster pic, and seriously strange. Beneath a canopy of stars, the group (and the monkey ghost) sit around, remembering, reflecting.

Uncle Boonmee floats along, offering small surprises, its characters stopping to sample sweet and sour honey straight from the hives, or stopping as snapshots of soldiers fill the screen - echoes of Thailand's scarred military history. Death comes in all sorts of ways, the film says. But so does life.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives *** (Out of four stars)

Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. With Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee. In Thai with subtitles. Distributed by the Match Factory.

Running time: 1 hour, 53 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (mystical interspecies sex, kidney rinsing, adult themes).

Playing at: Ritz Five Friday at 7:05 pm

Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com. Read his blog, "On Movies Online," at www.philly.com/philly/blogs/onmovies.