The Wayward Cloud
d. Tsai Ming-Liang, 2005
Tsai's The Wayward Cloud is an endlessly inventive film; part Tatiesque comedy, part Singin' in the Rain and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and (most importantly) part the freedom you don't see in many American films. The genius of the film lies on the way Tsai is able to reinvent these genres. His comedic scenarios are based entirely on the dramatic elements of the story. Though there are musical numbers in the film (all of them lip-synched), the film itself is very silent. Like Tati, Tsai narrows his dialogue to as little as possible, there are probably no more than 10 lines spoken in the film.
One of the main characters in The Wayward Cloud is Hsiao-Kang (Kang-sheng Lee), an actor in pornographic films made right in his apartment. The other is Shiang-chyi (Shiang-chyi), who once knew Hsiao but is unaware of his new profession. Their first encounter comes in a very lovely scene; Shiang is carrying a watermelon she found at the river (more on the background information later) and happens to pass by a swing Hsiao is sleeping at, and she notices a water bottle next to him. She walks towards the swing and takes the bottle to wash her watermelon, and when she comes back to drop it off, she realizes that she knows him and sits down and waits for him to wake up. She falls asleep and he's the one that wakes up first, and after a brief exchange ("do you still sell watches?" she says), they go back home and begin a relationship.
Because of Tsai's sparse use of dialogue, the development of Hsiao and Shiang's relationship is all the more fascinating; he films them together in wonderful little scenes. My favorite of these comes when Shiang (for some reason or another) has managed to get the crabs she was about to cook all over the kitchen floor. In a sequence that echoes Woody Allen and Diane Keaton picking up lobsters in Annie Hall, Tsai shoots her standing frying pan looking very scared and Hsiao trying his best to pick the lobsters up.
There are also several musical numbers in The Wayward Cloud. They come at very specific parts of the film and are supposed to take place in a fantasy world. They are all equally joyful and work as both irony (the scenes adjacent to them usually differ greatly in mood) and transitions between narrative stages.
Tsai has a very distinct way of framing and holding his shots. Along with the aforementioned lack of talking, Tsai rarely moves his camera. His static compositions are fascinating and they make the one or two times when he moves his camera very dramatic (just as the openened eye in Chris Marker's "La Jetee"). Tsai's shot composition is quite brilliant and very reminiscent of the work of both Godard (in which shots are later recalled) and Antonioni (where people are often the subjects of their environments).
The entire movie takes place in Taiwan during a drought. Because of this, the government is encouraging citizens to drink watermelon juice as a replacement. Watermelons are present throughout the film and the metaphor of the drought is critical even in the last few shots of the film.
The last sequence of The Wayward Cloud (which lasts I guess about 10 minutes) has stirred up controversy because of its sexual imagery, but I don't think it would help to go into details about the scene. Suffice it to say, however shocking the scene might be, it still serves as a greatly ambiguous ending to a wonderful movie in which the motivations and feelings of both Hsiao and Shiang open for interpretations.
