The latest season of The White Lotus is stuffed with beguiling, baffling, and totally brilliant characters. I was initially worried that Season 3 might fall short (so to speak) without Tanya and her flowing wardrobe. But I had nothing to fear. The current cast is beyond compelling, if not always easy to watch. Walton Goggins gives a masterclass in the art of brooding. And Parker Posey unintentionally provides captivating comic relief—stretching every syllable to the l i m i t.
The breakaway star, however, is the landscape of Thailand. Filmed at the Four Seasons Koh Samui and a few Anantara properties, the show somehow manages to bottle the visual magic of the tropical landscape and drizzles it liberally over every scene. Palm trees sway with slow, hypnotic charm. Green foliage so rich and thick it disappears into an inky dark abyss. You can virtually smell the humus. The natural world pulses, a soothing counterpoint to the increasingly stressful storyline. It’s stunningly beautiful.
It’s usually around this time of year, after a long white winter and tenaciously greige start to spring, that I yearn for such greenery. When we lived in Bali, the line between indoors and outdoors was soft, often invisible. Sure the buildings had walls and roofs, windows and doors, but somehow the spaces didn’t feel so structured, so limited, so closed off, so this or that. Our kids went to a remarkable school (the aptly named Green School) made entirely of bamboo bent into fantastical flowing forms. The only doors I remember seeing on the entire ‘campus’ were for the bathroom stalls. And we came very close to buying a dreamy old wooden house whose master bedroom was completely open to the elements on one side. Talk about a breath of fresh air.
At first, it was disconcerting to be in such spaces where there was no way to keep nature on a leash, to put it behind glass. But over time, the experience of living so intimately with the plant world became incredibly soothing. A green balm for the soul.
When we moved back to Canada at the start of the pandemic we were desperate to replicate this sensation. We filled the house with planted palms, a towering ficus tree, and sprawling monstera deliciosa (also deliciously known as the Swiss cheese plant). This greenery provided a measure of tropical relief, but we wanted more. After some digging around I discovered Ananbo, a French company that creates extraordinary wall murals of exotic, verdant scenes—wonderfully transportive landscapes that drop you in the middle of the jungle or on the banks of the Mekong.
And so, on a recent trip to France I lugged home a few rolls of wallpaper and set about turning our basement family room into a tropical lair. This Sunday we’ll crank up the heat, step into our subterranean faux jungle (fungle?), and see what craziness unfolds in the final episode of White Lotus. I’m already sweating.
