Days [2020]

 Veteran Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang forayed back to feature filmmaking after 7 years – he’d vaguely indicated retirement plans upon completing the bleak and edgy Stray Dogs, post which he’d fallen back on shorts – with Days, arguably one of his sparest and most intimate movies. Continuing his exploration of urban alienation, disenchantment and isolation, he stripped the film to its bare bones by composing it as a series of observant, fragmentary, seemingly disjointed sequences; the narrative sparseness and aesthetic austerity were made intensely minimalist through not just his customary long takes – though, quite atypically, he once briefly resorted to jerky hand-held cams – but more so by making it sans dialogues except for ambient sounds and stray remarks, thus making subtitles redundant and hence unavailable. It was also a deeply personal work with its frank sexual intimacy. It’s centered on the parallel lives of two men – middle-aged, well-off Kang (Lee Kang-sheng), afflicted with a physical malaise, that takes him from Taipei to Bangkok for acupuncture treatments; and the much younger Non (Anong Houngheuangsy), a Laotian immigrant in Bangkok – who, despite their divergent social classes, were bound by their lonely, spartan lives. Hence, when their paths eventually cross – upon Kang hiring Non for a massage – their liaison was physically charged, but also with subtle emotional undercurrents. The touching reference, therefore, to Chaplin’s late-career gem Limelight – in the form of a parting gift that plays its lilting score – added a rare sentimental touch. As an interesting aside, Lee was actually suffering from pains, which added underlying authenticity to his magnificently controlled expressions; and Tsai’s discovery of Anong – a younger version of Lee – was as fortuitous as his meeting Lee over three decades back.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Tsai Ming-liang

Genre: Drama/Existential Drama/Urban Drama

Language: Silent

Country: Taiwan

Stray Dogs [2013]

The films of Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang – an undoubted master of slow cinema – has always steadfastly focused on the dispossessed, the disenfranchised and the marginalized, and therefore on people literally living in the edges of a über-modern, late capitalist Taipei. And, like the thematic connectors, the stylistic, aesthetic and tonal palettes of his films too have often been distinctively identifiable. All these elements where there in ample measure in the bleak, edgy, alienating, ultra minimalist and deadpan Stray Dogs – Tsai’s 10^th, and allegedly final, film. The movie is centered on a single father (a brilliant Lee Kang-sheng continuing with one of the most iconic director-actor collaborations), who stays in an abandoned building with his two kids – a little girl (Lee Yi-chieh) and her elder brother (Lee Yi-cheng) – and he earns a harsh livelihood as a human sign-board on the city’s sidewalks; what could be a more pungent irony than that he resides in a deserted, dilapidated dump while advertising for real estates that he couldn’t possibly afford even in a thousand years. They survive on free giveaway meals and clean themselves in public toilets, and yet, despite their extreme impoverishment and existential disillusionment, they are a reasonably contented close-knit little family. In an interesting artistic choice, and a tad intriguing one, there’s a mysterious woman too in the mix who could either be the kids’ current or estranged mother, and who’s played by three separate actresses who’ve all been regulars in Tsai’s films (Yang Kuei-mei, Lu Yi-ching, Chen Shiang-chyi). The endless stasis in which the characters’ exist were amplified by the extreme unhurried pacing, long moments of obtuse silence and stunning long takes shot largely using a static camera.

Director: Tsai Ming-liang
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Existential Drama
Language: Taiwanese
Country: Taiwan

The Wayward Cloud [2005]

The Wayward Cloud was a pseudo-sequel to his masterful What Time is it There? as the two key protagonists from the earlier film returned here, even though they were poles apart thematically, tonally and stylistically. Using environmental crisis as the springboard, Tsai made an alternately vibrant, madcap and dreary film that can be classified, in absence of a better word, as weird. Hsaio-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng), formerly a street hawker selling watches, is now a puppet in adult films, while Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi) is back from Paris; meanwhile Taiwan is in the middle of an acute water shortage prompting the government and media to promote watermelons as a viable alternative. The drab, directionless, vacuous and lonely existences of the two characters suddenly get a kick upon their chance encounter in a park, and a strange liaison that borders between love and lust ensues. Tsai valiantly experimented with form (the dull, muted and colorless narrative, portraying the ‘real’, is regularly punctuated with flamboyant, colourful and farcical ‘musical’ sequences, reminiscent of Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark) and content (even those attuned to Tsai’s idiosyncratic style and flair for dry humour would be left flummoxed by the outlandish developments, while moralists are sure to be outraged by the queasy trip). The film reinforced Tsai’s pet themes of urban alienation, ennui, loneliness and longing for human connection, and also made forays into such topics as moral questions on pornography, exploitation, voyeurism and a twisted take on tender romance; however, Tsai’s audacity aside, the end result was rather oblique, unconvincing and bizarre, making this an alternately provocative and confounding watch.

Director: Tsai Ming-Liang
Genre: Black Comedy/Social Satire/Musical/Experimental Film
Language: Mandarin
Country: Taiwan

What Time Is It There? [2001]

With What Time Is It There? Tsai provided a ravishingly beautiful, deeply haunting, richly moody and quietly affecting meditation on temporal and spatial interconnectedness, or lack thereof. Sterile concrete jungles, claustrophobic apartments, incessant increase in distances between people and resultant loss of connection, and ensuing ennui, loneliness, urban alienation and existential crisis, formed the key thematic elements in this marvelously composed and meticulously crafted gem. The film’s parallel strands focused on two lonely, idiosyncratic and affectionately etched characters residing on the fringes of the society – Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a street vendor who sells watches, and Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi), a young woman who’s travelling to Paris. Shiang coaxing Hsiao to sell her the dual-time watch he’s wearing kicks off the storylines of these two characters grappling for human contact, albeit in vain. Hsaio’s recently widowed mother (Lu Yi-ching), unable to accept her husband’s death, is convinced of the presence of the deceased man’s ghost and reincarnation in her grief-stricken infatuation, while he becomes obsessed with setting all clocks and watches, including a massive clock attached to a skyscraper, to Paris time; meanwhile Shiang, unable to speak French, finds herself increasingly isolated in a strange world. Dark humour, irony, ambiguities and absurdist developments played fascinating roles in this delightfully concocted, profoundly melancholic and ultimately tragic exploration. In one bravura sequence, intercuts are used for showing socially deviant sexual situations of the 3 characters – the mother pleasuring herself through fantasy bordering on necrophilia, Hsiao with a prostitute in his cramped car, and Shiang tentatively kissing a lady she’s just met. Jean-Pierre Léaud made a cameo appearance in the film as did his 14 year-old avatar in a clip from The 400 Blows.

Director: Tsai Ming-Liang
Genre: Drama/Social Satire/Black Comedy/Psychological Drama
Language: Taiwanese/Mandarin/French
Country: Taiwan

Vive L'Amour [1994]

Though the bustling capital of Taiwan has been a key personality in Tsai’s filmography, his 1^st 3 films, viz. Rebels of the Neon God, Vive L’Amour and The River, specifically earned the nomenclature of ‘Taipei Trilogy’. Despite the mushy-sounding title, this was a rather anti-romantic film courtesy it’s stark tone, stylistic choice that was minimalist to the point of being nearly skeletal in terms of emotional or aesthetic ornamentations, and long takes which are bound to make the characters’ loneliness, intense urban alienation, disillusionment, extreme ennui and lack of any direction utterly palpable. The curious slice of life tale comprised of 3 human characters – Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a young and suicidal gay salesman, May Lin (Yang Kuei-Mei), a beautiful real-estate agent, and Ah-jung (Chen Chao-jung), a dandy street hawker; and an inanimate one in the form of a lavish duplex apartment. When Ah-jung starts following May, she, on an impulse, takes him along to the empty flat she has the keys to, and the two engage in casual sex. In parallel, Hsiao, who’d got hold of a key to the place, plans to indulge himself in the luxurious flat before slashing his wrist in a failed attempt to kill himself. Over the remainder of the film, the three characters keep frequenting the empty apartment which becomes a symbol of their emptiness and a place to escape their mundane lives. In one bravura moment near the end, a bizarre and idiosyncratic, but quietly poignant ménage à trois gets staged. The final scene, where May’s deep-set despair finally breaks through her façade, was striking for its stripped-down display of emotion.

Director: Tsai Ming-Liang
Genre: Drama/Urban Drama/Psychological Drama
Language: Mandarin
Country: Taiwan