I Don't Want To Sleep Alone
Tsai Ming-liang
So this is what a love story by director Tsai Ming-liang is like.In his eighth full-length feature film, the vagrant Hsiao Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) is nursed by Bangladeshi worker Rawang (Norman Atun) after getting beaten up on the streets of Kuala Lumpur.As he slowly recovers, he finds himself caught between the attentions of Rawang and the attraction he feels for Chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi), a coffee shop worker.Meanwhile, Chyi’s boss (Pearlly Chua) is also drawn to Hsiao Kang as he looks like her comatose son.
The movie is filled with inarticulate desire and impulses, and is set in a polyglot city filled with snatches of German opera, Malay folk song, Bollywood music, Cantonese opera and Chinese pop. The repressive silences of the characters are rendered all the more poignant by the contrast.
And who says that films are only for the eyes and ears? Tsai has conjured up a strong sense of smell in this film – emanating from a soiled and sullied mattress, the pool of dead water in the middle of an abandoned construction site, and the haze that hangs over the city. All these smells ground the movie in an earthy reality, even as the story takes stranger and darker turns.
While he still doesn’t like to move the camera much, preferring to let events simply unfold, the pacing here is less challenging than in films such as Vive L’Amour, which inched along slowly.
It helps that there’s plenty of his particular brand of absurdist humour in this film, including the surreal spectacle of a bulky mattress being lugged around KL.
And when the ominous haze envelops the city, there’s a priceless scene of Hsiao Kang and Chyi determinedly pressing on with their love-making in an orgy of coughing and desperate desire. You have to admire Lee and Chen, regulars in Tsai’s movies, for pulling it off with aplomb. First-time actor Norman delivers a truthful and touching performance, while stage veteran Chua plunges into the role fearlessly.
Tsai’s movies might not contain much dialogue, but there is always visual poetry to be found. The final scene is a sublimely tender and moving image that will stay with you for a long while.
(ST)