The Wayward Cloud (Tian bian yi duo yun) France/Taiwan 2005. 112 mins. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Goodbye Dragon Inn (Bu san) Taiwan 2003. 82 mins. In Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles.
All written and directed by Tsai Ming-liang. Starring Lee Kang-sheng and Chen Shiang-chyi, with Miao Tien and Norman Bin Atun.
An introduction to the work of director Tsai Ming-liang, both beautiful and confrontational. We look at I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone, The Wayward Cloud and Goodbye Dragon Inn. Just don’t expect a lot of dialogue…
From it’s opening scene, I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone is typically a Tsai Ming-liang film, only more so…
A ghettoblaster plays opera, while a paralysed man can only listen. The camera lingers for an uncomfortable amount of time, Tsai trademark style, forcing you to stare at this poor man. And stare. And stare. And unlike in real life, you can’t turn away. It’s the sort of confrontation with his audience that Tsai seems to enjoy.
There’s a disconnection, a distance between you and his creations that echoes the same disconnection his lead characters often have within their own worlds and lives. Little is ever said. In fact, that again is typically Tsai.
A poetical film, I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone shows us two men, both played by frequent collaborator Lee Kang-Sheng. One the son of a coffee shop owner, completely paralysed and looked after by his beleaguered carer Chyi (Chen Siang Chyi), the other Hsiao-Kang, an immigrant who is beaten and left for dead on the streets.
The implication is that one is dreaming the other. The beaten man is found and nursed back to health by another immigrant, Rawang (Norman Bin Atun) who still returns to the shell of a building he was involved in constructing, despite the work having been long abandoned. Kang soon falls for Chyi, unaware that his own carer Rawang has begun to develop feelings for him.
The directors’ characteristic lack of dialogue -which underlines his own ongoing agenda to compel his audience to ‘watch’ his movies, rather than be told their plotline -finds new meaning in a world where his protagonists are unable to communicate in words to each other. In a fast cut world, Tsai enjoys a leasiurely pace all but unheard of now.
It’s well known that Tsai Ming-liang toned down some of his initial ideas when he cast a Muslim in the role of Rawang, but the resulting fact subjectivity only adds power and tension to that attraction.
With a masterly eye for composition, giving an impression of control both over his cast and their environment, and how he wants his audience to fell. It’s ironic, then, that the most iconic scene in the film, where the butterfly lands on the lead characters shoulder, then flies off again, used a real and quite unpredictable butterfly. (After a long day filming hundreds of live butterflies!) The result is quite the most beautiful scene you might see in cinema this year.
It also features one of the funniest sex scenes you might see , as Chyi and Kang attempt to make out against the smog filled streets of Malaysia, their only vaguely protective surgical masks becoming obvious obstacles to their goal.
But then Tsai seems to find a lot of humour in the act of sex itself, even though he never shies away from candid, controversial and often quite explicit scenes – and The Wayward Cloud is one heck of a good example of that.
With Taiwan in the midst of a water shortage, the public are told to drink watermelon juice. Shiang-Chyi is secretly bottling water from public toilets in plastic bottles. Quite by chance she meets Hsiao-Kang, who she once bought a watch from when he was a street vendor, and a romance – of a sort – blossoms between them.
What she doesn’t realise is that he has quite a successful career now as a porn star, working in an apartment upstairs from her.
Despite its relatively explicit sex scenes, Wayward Cloud is perhaps one of Tsai’s most accessible movies. It’s a great introduction to his work, with the narrative interjected by fun lip synced dance routines to Taiwanese pop songs from the 50s and 60s, their innocent lyrics given new meanings.
Some of the biggest laughs in the movie come from the sex scenes from the porn movies filmed upstairs: from the first scene featuring a watermelon, to a shower scene faked due to the draught with bottled water (and then when they run out, who knows where it came from?), to Japanese porn actress who ‘losing’ a bottle cap.
Yet this tone dramatically changes when Chyi finds the Japanese actress unconscious in a lift, ultimately exposing Kang’s career. Having tried unsuccessfully to wake her, the Adult filmmakers decide they should get ‘back to work’, whether the actress is conscious or not. Their attitude is shown as grotesque, literally treating another human being like a piece of meat.
Tsai film is a eulogy for love in the 21st century, when anything can be bought, but strangely Kang cannot share the same sexual intimacy with Chyi as he does with his on film partners. Are love and sex truly different things, he asks?
Sexual relations also take a twisted form in Tsai’s Goodbye Dragon Inn, about the final performance at a cinema frequented by gay cruisers and ghosts. The box office girl pines for the projectionist, once again both leading seemingly solitary existences – a common thread to Tsai’s work.
Against the backdrop of an old wuxia movie – King Hu’s Dragon Inn – the director pays tribute to a dying for communal theatre going, and the sort of films that where once seen there.
There’s more than a slight comparison to be made with fellow Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee. Lee may have catapulted himself into the US mainstream with Jane Austin and Marvel comic adaptations (indeed his output was always mainstream, even when dealing with tricky subject matter), but has used this to give hive him greater freedom in his other work, especially his latest film Lust, Caution. But perhaps the nearest similarity is with Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, whose repeating of themes and characters mirror that of Tsai.
Tsai’s work demands much from its audience. He deliberately makes his films sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes confrontational, but often funny and always rewarding. And with the recent season at the BFI Southbank, he’s finally getting the recognition he deserves in the UK.
DVD details
I DON'T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE / THE WAYWARD CLOUD
Distributor: Axiom Films (UK)
Both Axiom releases are exemplary transfers, gaining the best in sound and quality possible for each title. Extras are a little light, simply an interview with director Tsai Ming-liang and stills gallery on each film, but at nealy 40 minutes each, the interviews allow the director to talk about his work in depth. (Which, admittedly, is not much of a problem!)
Simply shot, they allow Ming-liang to come across just as he is in real life, enigmatic and very likeable. It’s difficult not to be compelled to reinterpret each film after hearing Ming-liang talk about them, and these DVD releases will allow you to do that!
Big thumbs up to Axiom for leading the way in making Ming-liang’s work available in the UK (finally!) Now, how about the back catalogue...?
GOODBYE DRAGON INN
Distributor: Wellspring/Genius (USA)
This US DVD includes the short film The Skywark Is Gone, which provides a narrative bridge between What Time Is It There? and The Wayward Cloud.
