Pusan Film Festival Reviews 7: I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang)
I haven't seen Tsai's last film, "The Wayward Cloud," but I'm happy to report that "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" is better than his appallingly dull and pretentious "Goodbye, Dragon Inn," even if it's got nothing on Tsai's best work of the '90s, "Vive L'amour" and "The Hole." "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" represented the mummification of Tsai's style - the stretches of silence and static scenes where nothing happens, which had served him so well in his early career but with each passing film threatened to get old, finally found their ultimate negative expression. Tsai continues to grind his wheels with the new film, though it's hardly as unbearable as "Goodbye, Dragon Inn." The problem is that Tsai's style was something of a revelation when he made "Vive L'amour" - though it felt a little like a Taiwanese version of an Antonioni film it was actually a deadpan comedy, with a wickedly tragic twist at the end that turned like a knife you didn't even realize was stuck in your ribs all the while.
I hoped that a change of scenery might do Tsai good, and it was interesting to hear that "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" was shot in Malaysia, where Tsai was born. I wanted to ask him some questions after the screening about the differences he may have felt shooting in Malaysia, but unfortunately, like the Bruno Dumont session, questions were asked in Korean translated to the director's native language, and I don't speak much Korean, French or Chinese. No one speaks much in Tsai's new film (of the three main characters only one is ever heard to utter a word), there are frank and disturbing sexual scenes, and there are several shots of people walking slowly down darkened corridors or alleyways. All this has become a mannerism - rather than communicate incommunicability the lack of dialogue feels like an art film pretension now, rather than be shocking the sexual scenes strike anyone familiar with the director's past work as been-there-done-that, and the long static shots of people walking just serve no purpose whatsoever. Unfortunately much of Tsai Ming-liang's new film feels stale.
I haven't seen Tsai's last film, "The Wayward Cloud," but I'm happy to report that "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" is better than his appallingly dull and pretentious "Goodbye, Dragon Inn," even if it's got nothing on Tsai's best work of the '90s, "Vive L'amour" and "The Hole." "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" represented the mummification of Tsai's style - the stretches of silence and static scenes where nothing happens, which had served him so well in his early career but with each passing film threatened to get old, finally found their ultimate negative expression. Tsai continues to grind his wheels with the new film, though it's hardly as unbearable as "Goodbye, Dragon Inn." The problem is that Tsai's style was something of a revelation when he made "Vive L'amour" - though it felt a little like a Taiwanese version of an Antonioni film it was actually a deadpan comedy, with a wickedly tragic twist at the end that turned like a knife you didn't even realize was stuck in your ribs all the while.
I hoped that a change of scenery might do Tsai good, and it was interesting to hear that "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" was shot in Malaysia, where Tsai was born. I wanted to ask him some questions after the screening about the differences he may have felt shooting in Malaysia, but unfortunately, like the Bruno Dumont session, questions were asked in Korean translated to the director's native language, and I don't speak much Korean, French or Chinese. No one speaks much in Tsai's new film (of the three main characters only one is ever heard to utter a word), there are frank and disturbing sexual scenes, and there are several shots of people walking slowly down darkened corridors or alleyways. All this has become a mannerism - rather than communicate incommunicability the lack of dialogue feels like an art film pretension now, rather than be shocking the sexual scenes strike anyone familiar with the director's past work as been-there-done-that, and the long static shots of people walking just serve no purpose whatsoever. Unfortunately much of Tsai Ming-liang's new film feels stale.