Review: I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
Kuala Lumpur mirrors Taipei in I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, Taiwan filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang's first feature set in his native Malaysia. That's just the beginning of the echoes and parallels in this typically sad and twisted movie.
Lee Kang-Sheng is back as Xiao-Kang, the Taipei native who's grown up in Tsai's films since 1992's Rebels of the Neon God. But he also plays a catatonic young man in the care of his sister and a live-in nurse. At one point the two Lees are effectively eye to eye, in one of several mirrored scenes within a movie full of fascinating perspectives.
Hsiao-Kang, traveling in the city alone, gets drawn into a street scam that doesn't end well and is rescued by South Asian migrant laborers. The sliver of a story, as usual, is just a frame for Tsai's fixations: sickness and healing, unhealthy lust and pantomimed love, and environmental disaster.
Though little else is new, the setting is, and Asian film's poet of standing water portrays Kuala Lumpur as another version of Taipei that's even more sticky and stifling. It's a perfect Tsai location: a city of the globalized present, mixing old, new, and abandoned buildings and Malay, Chinese, and South Asian residents. Old Mandarin and Cantonese pop mixes with Bollywood tunes and local folk music, though there are no musical performance numbers this time.
Everyone in the film lives on the margin or the edge of the margin. The city looms outside small attic windows, and it's through windows and doors that the most interesting shots peer. Credited here as co-cinematographer with frequent partner Liao Pen-jung, Tsai proves himself again as a master of composition and color.
Yet Sleep falls short of Tsai's masterpieces, The River and Goodbye, Dragon Inn. At his best, Tsai delivers universal humanist messages through quiet poetry. But like his other lesser films, Sleep takes place in a closed, self-referential Tsai world. Beneath the sheen of realism is a stylized performance that pays meager dividends to a general audience. Like that other queer master of Southeast Asian film, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai loves to play with cinematic conventions. But whereas Weerasethakul constantly invites the audience in to his lighthearted games, Tsai often seems to keep the fun to himself and his loyal fans. As Sleep drifts into the home stretch, it's like listening to Jimi Hendrix on the last day of Woodstock. "You can leave when you want to," Hendrix told the audience. "We're just jammin.'"
Lee Kang-Sheng is back as Xiao-Kang, the Taipei native who's grown up in Tsai's films since 1992's Rebels of the Neon God. But he also plays a catatonic young man in the care of his sister and a live-in nurse. At one point the two Lees are effectively eye to eye, in one of several mirrored scenes within a movie full of fascinating perspectives.
Hsiao-Kang, traveling in the city alone, gets drawn into a street scam that doesn't end well and is rescued by South Asian migrant laborers. The sliver of a story, as usual, is just a frame for Tsai's fixations: sickness and healing, unhealthy lust and pantomimed love, and environmental disaster.
Though little else is new, the setting is, and Asian film's poet of standing water portrays Kuala Lumpur as another version of Taipei that's even more sticky and stifling. It's a perfect Tsai location: a city of the globalized present, mixing old, new, and abandoned buildings and Malay, Chinese, and South Asian residents. Old Mandarin and Cantonese pop mixes with Bollywood tunes and local folk music, though there are no musical performance numbers this time.
Everyone in the film lives on the margin or the edge of the margin. The city looms outside small attic windows, and it's through windows and doors that the most interesting shots peer. Credited here as co-cinematographer with frequent partner Liao Pen-jung, Tsai proves himself again as a master of composition and color.
Yet Sleep falls short of Tsai's masterpieces, The River and Goodbye, Dragon Inn. At his best, Tsai delivers universal humanist messages through quiet poetry. But like his other lesser films, Sleep takes place in a closed, self-referential Tsai world. Beneath the sheen of realism is a stylized performance that pays meager dividends to a general audience. Like that other queer master of Southeast Asian film, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai loves to play with cinematic conventions. But whereas Weerasethakul constantly invites the audience in to his lighthearted games, Tsai often seems to keep the fun to himself and his loyal fans. As Sleep drifts into the home stretch, it's like listening to Jimi Hendrix on the last day of Woodstock. "You can leave when you want to," Hendrix told the audience. "We're just jammin.'"
Labels: TML
posted by Steve at
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