O Sabor da Melancia

Watching Tian bian yi duo yun ( The Wayward Cloud ) is a really weird experience. I didn't whether to laugh or cry, to celebrate the brilliance of the film, to recoil in shock from the grittiness or to wince at the absurd campiness.

Its amazing how Tsai Ming-Liang manages to get the cast to emote so much through so little dialogue, how he builds an electrifying atmosphere through minimal use of music (except for the campy nostalgic music videos ... really something else altogether, a see to believe phenomenon).

The brutal scenes of porn filming and the drought were really alluding to the director's favorite theme of alienation, which really works very well. The final scene which seems to disgust so many people into walking out is a really fitting conclusion to this treatise on estrangement and is certainly unforgettable.

This is maybe the most original and bold sequels ever made. Porn is like the one missing ingredient to make his films interesting, and it is a fascinating movie. Very enjoyable, more so than most his others which are shy about sex, but that their sexuality is existing on the corners off screen. This film is also complimenting his tactile oriented cinema, which suits the sexuality of the material like a glove; it is not afraid of the body... and that's the case with all his films, but here especially so. To the point of a certain grotesqueness. Because this is not titillating at all, just extremely intimate. It also carries his foray in physical comedy from Goodbye Dragon Inn, and an interesting thing about watching his films develop is that he learns from each one. By now it is obvious it is the same film every time, it is just going differently into the style each time, taking detours. I do still hold to his first three films because there is something special about an artist not knowing who he is yet and discovering it on screen. I would not even know how to begin to rank his movies.

What a strange, strange, strange film. Strangest thing about this is that it was a huge hit in Taiwan, grossing 20 million dollars when the average film in the country makes under a million. When you see a cover with a girl tongue kissing a watermelon, it is understandable to think "I'll pass", but in this case you would be missing out.

As best I can describe, this is a film about two neighbors who live in an apartment building in Taiwan during an unusually hot summer and inexplicable water shortage. One woman named Shiang-chyi Chen sits around her apartment eating watermelon, while her next door neighbor Kang-sheng Lee makes hardcore porn films (which in the opening scene involve a watermelon between a woman's legs).

The film is mostly minimalist and truly beautiful in its austere compositions and delicate urban electric light; shadows and silhouettes are repeat motif used gorgeously. This is interspersed with scenes of graphic sex, albeit no more than you would see in "Crash", "Short Bus", or "WR. Mysteries of the Organism", but just as explicit. The same long takes which lingered on an empty hallway now assume the position of Peeping Tom.

The detached view of sexuality would seem indebted to films like "Crash" and "Salo" where the body is reduced to a writhing mindless thing with genitals. This becomes especially apparent in the last scene, where a women is unconscious/dead (there is some debate between whether this porn actress is dead or passed out from heat exhaustion), but the show must go on, and the crew literally props her up in a variety of positions so the Lee can have sex with her.

This is all watched by Chen, who discovers only moments before when she finds the porn starlet passed out in the elevator, and consequently what Lee does for a living. Their flirting and relationship build up being the emotional heart of the film, which repeats images of watermelon and bottled water, again and again. Our heroin is often scene rubbing water on her arms while alone, juxtaposed with our hero covered in his and someone' else's sweat. They even share Annie Hall homage, of giddily picking up crabs from the kitchen floor. And they laugh, and they love, and the film swerves back and forth between their two perspectives, meeting in an occasional musical number.

It's also worth mentioning that this is a musical. There are about 5 or 6 full on musical numbers, and not merely spontaneous karaoke affairs like "Happiness Of The Katakari's", but full on "Singing In The Rain" level classical Hollywood show-stoppers (one song includes a crowd with umbrellas) if directed by Tarsem. In one scene a character becomes a merman and serenades the moon from a water tower. In another Alice in Wonderland like giant flowers appear around the statue of a Taiwanese politician. In yet another after our hero is having some trouble getting it up, there is a song where a man wearing a life-size penis-suit is surrounded by dancing girls wearing plastic buckets on their heads, in a public bathroom. I can't stress enough how genuinely fantastic (from a technical film standpoint), and absurdly incredible they are.

The songs themselves are assorted 60's and modern soul and folk sounds from Taiwan, and are all unique and lovely in their own right. Weird as all this sounds, it comes together in a smashingly perverse, erotic, socially critical, and emotionally devastating climax, you might find in a Lars Von Trier film at his most crafty like "The Idiots" or "Dogville" "Goodbye Dragon Inn" Ming Ling Tsai's previous directorial effort was so rigid in never moving it's camera's and keeping it's character's in the dark, it distracted from how formally inventive and cinematically fresh the whole thing was. "The Wayward Cloud" as a follow up has no such difficulties, getting its vitality up and keeping it up. It veers between the common and the theatrical so organically it stops feeling strange when the sing-along, follow the money shots, which flow into images of watermelons floating down a river.

As for what "Wayward Cloud" means, I would say it's a love story. The two lead characters, I later read, were in a previous Ming-liang Tsia's film called, "What Time Is It There?" and this is their "Before Sunset" second chance at love. It would have been simple for Ming-liang Tsia, to make a moody little film, about an alienated women infatuated with an alienated man, doing alienated things, which is basically what the film is. However like a true artist Miang Liang imbues the proceedings with a cinematic spirit, through editing, cinematography, MUSIC, and subdued/wildly theatrical performances that becomes transcendent of the films run-of-the-mill social yearnings for genuine connection in the cold, cruel, world. I can't think of any film as repulsive, arousing, beautiful, fun, and sad, at least not with all those gears running at once like they are here.

In a way I thought it was a happy ending. The couple has come together right? No more lifeless proxy sex with sleeping girls and emotional amateur porn, and no more isolated peeking around the corner from what we desire while waiting for the water (life's lubricant) to return. I don't know, maybe I'm all wrong, and our heroine's tears are from a place of even deeper sadness. Or maybe their courtship was so convincing and extraordinarily arranged that I was rooting for the couple to come together, regardless of their strange and horrible acts.

Only one thing is certain, the watermelon has lost its innocence in the fruit kingdom, it must now go in the adult's only banana and kumquat, sectioned off by beads, part of the produce aisle.

In a Taiwan where a drought has caused water to be replaced by watermelons since they are now cheaper, the disaffected population discovers new uses for this fruit, and new sexual fetishes emerge. With this strange idea, Tsai Ming-liang presents an odd romance, as well as a dissection of the porn industry and an exploration of human nature, specifically lust, desire and sexuality. And to my surprise, The Wayward Cloud wasn't just an erotic romance, but also an absurd musical that, like The Hole, features spontaneous musical numbers with Grace Chang songs. And another thing that surprised me was the fact that this film is a sequel to What Time Is It There?, now following the hopeless romantics Hsiao-kang and Shiang-chyi together in a relationship at last. Only Kang does not sell watches in the street anymore. He is a porn actor, and Chyi doesn't know this. With the same characters of a previous film, Tsai continues to build upon his themes of loneliness, alienation, escapism and lack of human connection and communication.

In this alternate version of Taiwan, its inhabitants strive to escape their miserable realities - Kang from the porn world, and Chyi from her empty and lonesome life. Love is their means to escape the darkness that surrounds them. Oh, and imaginary musicals too - Tsai uses musicals as a way for the characters to communicate the feelings that they unable to using words, for their reality is one of long silences, thoughts unspoken and sentiments unshared. Like in The Hole, Tsai Ming-liang contrasts the emptiness and loneliness of a gray reality with the exaggerated musicals of a colorful fantasy. The Wayward Cloud ends with a 15 minute rape scene where Hsiao-kang fucks the unconscious Japanese pornstar to exhaustion while his camera crew films the whole thing, all of them with unhappy faces, clearly disconnected from reality, devoid of any purpose or meaning in their lives. With this sequence that will certainly make some viewers feel uncomfortable - two cold bodies thrusting against each other without producing any sparks of feeling - Tsai showcases the lack of love and connection in the porn industry, how it's all just a job, how people sell their bodies like one would sell watermelons - for a low price and for the buyer to do whatever they like with it. And finally, The Wayward Cloud reaches its final shot, yes, that horrifying and traumatic final shot. The walls of Shiang-chyi's fantasy of a perfect romance come crashing down as she gets a taste of the nasty reality of life (no pun intended).

The Wayward Cloud might be 'too much' for some (if so, check out the less extreme but still Asian food-porn film, Tampopo), but for me this is a masterpiece. As usual, Lee Kang-sheng is amazing as Hsiao-kang, but Chen Shiang-chyi shined particularly brighter in this film, in my opinion. Though seeing Lee as a sea-monster singing to the moon, and dressed in pink women's clothes while singing that catchy song, was something I never expected to see but absolutely enjoyed. Despite having Tsai's classic contemplative lengthy takes and prolongued moments of silence, The Wayward Cloud is certainly less meditative and slow than most of Tsai Ming-liang's work. It's much more energetic, ridiculous, juicy and freaky, which works perfectly with the themes and concept of this story. The Wayward Cloud is both dark and hilarious, and as I've seen someone say before, Tsai's films are simultaneously funny and sad, never just one or the other - I couldn't agree more. I just loved my time with this lyrical porno-musical of a masterpiece.

I saw the film in a screening in the Jerusalem film festival in Israel. Tsai came with lee kang-sheng his actor and together they introduced the film to us Israeli film buffs. The film was a blast.

Tsai said many people leave before the end of the film, it certainly happened, but us who managed to enter the special "mode" tsai requires from his audience enjoyed a modern masterpiece! To me it felt like a mixture of tati's "playtime" and oshima's "in the realm of the senses", to witch you must add obscure eastern musical numbers. It was breathtaking, funny, disturbing, sad and romantic.

It's true, the film shows men and women in degrading situations - but that is the main issue of the film and it deals with it with great compassion. The image of kang-sheng sitting in the street after the shooting of a porn scene, to discover ants crawling on his chest and forehead says it all.

Thank you very much Tsai Ming-liang.