The Wayward Cloud

Tian bian yi duo yun

Taiwan

2005

114 Min

Color

1.85:1

Mandarin

Currently 3.9/5 Stars.
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CAST Chen Shiang-chyi, Lu Yi-Ching, Sumomo Yozakura, Lee Kang-sheng

ED Chen Sheng-Chang

Berlinale (Competition): Outstanding Artistic Achievement, Alfred Bauer Award, FIPRESCI Prize, Toronto

Synopsis

The most audacious film to date from visionary director Tsai Ming-liang, The Wayward Cloud is about a porn actor and the museum tour guide who enters into a strange relationship with him, unaware of his profession. Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng) is the same alienated youth whose chance encounter with Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi) provided the spark that fueled Tsai’s earlier films. Once again, these two lost souls cross paths—he now works as an actor in no-budget porn films, and she wanders around Taipei, hoarding bottles of water because of a serious drought. In fact, the government is recommending that people eat watermelons to hydrate themselves. This fruit sets in motion a perverse (and often hilarious) symbolic theme throughout much of the film. As in his earlier film The Hole (SFIFF 1999), Tsai adds trashy, campy musical numbers into the narrative. These sequences play against the raw sex scenes, creating a bizarre, existential chaos. The filmmaker has created a perfectly realized alternative universe in his ongoing exploration of sex, bodies, and loneliness. His stationary camera perfectly illustrates the isolation and exploitation the characters are trapped in—yet the film is as funny as it is emotionally tortured. Tsai’s characters are indeed wayward clouds, drifting through life without purpose, in a world without water. And prepare yourself for the film’s unbelievable final scene (no spoilers here), which manages to be both weirdly erotic and profoundly disturbing. —Joel Shepard, BAM/PFA

Director

Tsai Ming-liang

Along with Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang became one of Taiwan’s most prominent directors during the 1990s. His films regularly appeared in festivals around the globe and he received lavish praise from film critics worldwide. Born in Malaysia in 1957, Tsai moved to Taiwan and graduated from the Chinese Cultural University in 1982. For the next ten years, he worked in theater and writing screenplays for films and television. He directed his first feature in 1992, Rebels of the Neon God, which, with its tough but tender depictions of disaffected youth, earned him comparisons to Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In addition to Fassbinder, Tsai was also influenced by François Truffaut, to whom he was exposed as a student. His style differed from his idol Truffaut’s, however, like his countrymen Yang and Hou, Tsai preferred long takes, few close-ups, and sparse dialogue. And like another of his influences, Michelangelo Antonioni, he displayed a genius for placing the camera at… read more

Rebels of the Neon God would become a template for the rest of his films, all of which, in some way, were about loneliness and walked a tightrope between deep sadness and deadpan humor. In his second film, Vive L’Amour, three isolated Taipei dwellers connect in odd ways via a vacant apartment. In the much more unsettling The River, a young man develops a debilitating neck ailment that may or may not be psychosomatic after he is discovered by a movie director and asked to play a corpse floating face down in the dirty Tamsui River. The Hole concerns a mysterious epidemic sweeping Taipei as the new millennium approaches, and features a number of surreal musical numbers. Perhaps his most humorous film, What Time is it There? features Lee as a man on the street selling watches and who becomes obsessed with the idea that Paris exists in a completely different time. In addition to his features, Tsai also made a number of videos and short films, the latest of which, The Skywalk Is Gone, was set near where a skywalk (that served as an important location in What Time is it There?) was demolished. The film both commemorated the skywalk and served as a bridge to the director’s next feature. Tsai’s honors include the FIPRESCI award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for The Hole, the Silver Bear at the 1996 Berlin Film Festival for The River, and the Golden Lion at the 1994 Venice Film Festival for Vive L’Amour.

(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:194191~T1)

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Judicial Joe

25May12

Hilarious, bizarre, highly entertaining, and with an ending that you will never forget.

The Dude likes this

ALICE X

1Apr12

So, I didn't realize that I watched it without any sub until the credits rolled.

Monsieur Arkadin

3Mar12

This film is perplexing on a first viewing. It only gets better with time, and subsequent viewings. See it while you're young to allow for maximum growth.

sabrinask

18Sep11

So much love/hate for this film, i can't rate it. #indecisive

Jon K likes this

film_lies101

7Jan12

I felt the same way for quite some time after seeing it. After I couldn't stop thinking about for weeks, I decided it was one the greatest film I had ever seen. The ending is very unexpected and utterly devastating in its commentary on modern urban loneliness.