Les chiens errants

Like watching paint dry, in the rain.

no reason to make, no reason to watch.

even if you speed up the movie it's still interminable.

My first Tsai Ming Liang film was his fifty minute odyssey of a monk moving very slowly through Journey To The West. I unexpectedly loved it, so I was ready for any challenges he had for me in his second film of the year Stray Dogs. Yes, it has an abundance of slowly paced and ethereal shots, but here he had a loose narrative. It's all about the anguish of living on the fringe and the film perfectly evokes that emotion as characters silently battle the elements. There's not a shot quite like the scene where its lead sings tearfully while holding up a sign. However, the film lacks an essential economy to make it worth all its 138 minutes, even if it is beautifully shot for the most part. It needed more time in the editing room, and more time in the writers room at that. There's not enough layers to the characters and story to make it completely satisfying, besides potential political meanings that flew over my head. Its best when its eliciting a devastating trapped sensation with an eternal cycle offering no escape.

7/10

As I sat and watched "Stray Dog", I felt very annoyed. Again and again and again, scenes where nothing particular is happening, the camera remained there for a VERY long time. In each case, the film could have been edited and you would have had roughly the same effect...without boring the audience. So, when you show two men in ponchos in the rain holding signs, you don't NEED to show this scene for a full minute and then return to do the same thing again-- especially when the men aren't doing anything other than holding signs!! The same goes for the introduction, as you see a lady staring at her kids as they sleep...for the longest time!! In addition, showing a guy taking a leak is another sign that this is a self-indulgent sort of film from director Ming-liang Tsai. Editing and pacing are important to most directors, but not apparently in this case! As a result, a decent story is marred unnecessarily by the direction that tends to bore and annoy many viewers. I know I sure felt both. What SHOULD have been an important film about a homeless family on the fringes instead is an interminable bore. We get it that the folks are depressed and that's why they do nothing...but think about the audience having to watch this.

Watching his films in order, they were always building to fulfill a vision and it is questionable if he achieved it, but here he broke the dam down. How to quantify this notion of the breakthrough? It is hard to say.

It is achieving deeper ends of surrealism than ever before, but not pushing it on us like the others. The others are really racing to impress us, work for us, as auteur works, clever puzzles.

This one is existing in its own orbit. So if I discuss the notion of a breakthrough it is that he finally erased the director Tsai from his film and let it exist on its own without the artist winking at us. That can't be understated in the arts which, and his body of work specifically, has always been about him. He even had a line of merch.

Something about the chilling emptiness of the slow cinema does something to our bodies, our minds. Here I feel he truly let the baby be born, and let it exist, and came into his own as an artist director.

It is a film that must be earned, through understanding Tsai, through understanding slow film and what it is reacting against in the traditional forms, it is not one that can be viewed through ignorance. It is making connections, moods, feelings, the canvas isn't the film on screen, but is our consciousness. All slow cinema operates in the same way, but to different ends. Here is the same actors and actresses as his other films, but they do not feel like the 10th film of them, it feels like they all got together for the first time. The transience of it all, creates a pure cinema and points to new frontiers.

tsai ming liang is a director or should you even say an auteur who is really a strange bird in Chinese or in world cinema. this movie continues his same oddball line of work. it is perfectly suited for a highbrow art-house film lover who knows how to appreciate the overly and painfully long scenes completely incomprehensible storytelling and heavy symbolism all of which are mixed together to create an utterly boring movie that lasts more than two hours. the spectators gluteus maximus muscles are put to a tough test to get through the yawning experience...

director's previous works have been as peculiar or even more peculiar as this movie (to say the least - in "he liu" made in 1997 the father and son even end up in the same bed to have sex!) so i strongly recommend them only to a very elitist (western) viewer who wants to have recognition for his/her excellent taste (to get totally bored) and who still thinks postmodernism is a relevant mode to make movies.

it is indeed a real pity because i think the story could have had relevance to tell something important and revealing about taiwanese society but now all the potential substance to make a point is mostly wasted.