THE WAYWARD CLOUD
Taiwan, 2005, 114 minutes, Colour.
Keng- Sheng Lee, Shiang -Chyi Chin.
Directed by Tsai Ming -Liang.
The Wayward Cloud is another of Tsai Ming- Liang’s multi-awarded films. He is a great favourite in international film festivals, winning the Golden Lion in Venice in 1994 with)Live for Love, winning the FIPRESCI Prize for Goodbye Dragon Inn in Venice, 2002, and winning the Silver Bear as well as the FIPRESCI Prize for this film at Berlin in 2005.
A cult director, he was born in Malaysia but worked most of his life in Taiwan.
After his success in the 1990s and with Goodbye Dragon Inn, he turned his attention more specifically to themes of sexuality.
His leading actor, Keng- Sheng Lee, appeared in several of his films and in the succeeding film, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone.
Lee then went on to direct his own film, Help Me Eros, which screened in competition in Venice, 2007.
Lee’s character is a porn actor – and the film shows about half a dozen strong pornographic sequences, intercourse, masturbation, a kind of necrophilia. The director is on record as saying he did not want his film to be pornographic. Rather, it is suggested that he is critical of pornography. Different viewers with different sensibilities would argue the case on either side.
The setting is the city of Taipei. It is in drought, a water shortage. A young woman who works in a library takes water from the public toilet facilities and stores them in her room. However, watermelons are selling more cheaply and there is a lot made of watermelons in a realistic sense, with people drinking the juice, as well as sexual symbol in one of the opening sequences.
The actor and the librarian encounter one another, become friends, he helping her to open a suitcase, recovering her lost key which has been put in the tarmac of a road which is being mended. She then discovers his profession, watches him at work. There is also a Japanese actress who comes for some of the pornographic film-making.
Suddenly, into the action, half a dozen songs are introduced in a very camp style. They are amusing, odd, focusing on women, sometimes using phallic symbols, but for the director, with a gay sensibility. The songs often use American melodies with Chinese lyrics, like ‘Sixteen Tons’ or ‘The Drifting Cloud’ which gives the title to the film.
Ultimately, with the two people experiencing the heat, getting the water, friendly with each other, there is a culmination in a pornographic segment being filmed, which then involves the Japanese actress in an unconscious state, the young woman as voyeur, making sounds, and the young man ultimately making her a participant. This is the final image. It is difficult to know whether the young man is abusing the woman, or whether she is a willing participant, or whether this is meant to be an expression of their realisation of their love for each other.
The director is also on record as talking about the human body, its beauty, functions, the humorous aspects – and he brings all these into his film-making.
The succeeding film, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, sees the director moving back to his own Malaysia and, with the same star, focusing on relationships in a difficult situation. It is far less confronting, visually and thematically, than The Wayward Cloud.
