I DON’T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE

Malaysia, 2006, 110 minutes, Colour.
Lee Kang- Sheng, Chen Shiang- Chyi, Norman Atun.
Directed by Tsai Ming- Liang.

Tsai Ming- Liang was born in Malaysia but spent his career in Taiwan. For the first time, for this film, he returns to Kuala Lumpur to make a film in his home country.

Tsai Ming- Liang is a great favourite of festival-goers and of juries, especially those from the International Film Critics’ Association. In 1994 he won the Golden Lion in Venice for his film, Vive L' Amour. He made the striking films The River and The Hole during the 1990s. Again, in Venice, in 2002, he won an award for Goodbye Dragon Inn. He won the critics’ award in Berlin in 2005 for The Wayward Cloud – an exercise in pornography, about pornographic film-making (along with Busby Berkeley-style musical numbers).

I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone is far more accessible than his previous films. It focuses on three young people in Kuala Lumpur. The first is a young man, a Bangladeshi migrant, who takes compassion (like the Good Samaritan) on a young man who is bashed by thugs in the street. He takes him home, bathes him, sets up a bed for him, cares for him until he is better. The young man is a local, a wanderer. The third person is a young woman in the same building, who has a sexual entanglement with the man who is restored to health.

In the meantime, upstairs in the building (which seems a bizarre kind of apocalyptic building, an abandoned warehouse with a deep pool at the bottom), a young man lies in coma (played by the same actor who portrays the man who was beaten up). He is cared for by the young woman and is the object of sexual desire from the owner of the café where the young woman works upstairs.

At times, the film is difficult to follow – but soon, all the characters are in place. The film also used techniques popular in Ming- Liang’s films, very long takes, a very static focus on characters. Many audiences will be impatient with this particular slow style.

Ming- Liang is often very explicit in his representations of sexual activity, both heterosexual and homosexual. In this case, he intended for much more explicit relationship between the two young men. However, the amateur performer from Kuala Lumpur was Muslim and did not want to enact these scenes and in fact, homosexuality is condemned by Islam. The director adapted – and the relationship is much more humane and benefits by the reticence. Eventually, again in a kind of apocalyptic tone, the three young people float on a mattress in the pool, with some hope for survival and the future.

1. The work of the director? In Taiwan? Themes of identity? Sexuality? Society?

2. The director working in his homeland, his insights into life in Malaysia? Life in Kuala Lumpur? For the poor? For the migrant workers? For work, for the environment?

3. The setting: the streets of Kuala Lumpur, the abandoned factory, its structure, interior, the corridors, the pillars, the rooms, the pool? How well did the director use this as a commune? The musical score – the classical music? Western?

4. The focus on migrants, their presence from all over Asia, the Malaysian boom of the 90s, the collapse (as witnessed by the building)? Their living hand-to-mouth? The comment on Malaysian society and its possibilities?

5. The groups in the street, friendships, camaraderie, noise? The finding of the mattress – and the elaborate carrying of the mattress through the streets? The mattresses in the building, alternate mattresses? The use of the mattress? (And its being a witness point in the trial of Anwar Ibraham?) The style of the director, the long single takes? Very little camera movement? The cumulative effect of this aesthetic? Slowing the audience down? Contemplating the characters and their situations?

6. The opening, the long contemplation of the young man in coma, shaved head, lying still? As a character recurring throughout the film? The boss-lady of the café, her care for him, washing him? The young girl and her attending him? His continually lying prone, his being washed? The sexual aspects, the stimulation? His future?

7. The homeless man, wrapped in the mattress, brought home? Rawang, his background, Bangladesh? Alone? His settling the homeless man, providing the mattress, washing it, changing it because of the bugs? Getting other mattresses? His tending to the homeless man, helping him to the toilet, the intense detail of caring for him, washing him, clothing him? Continually caring for him? His dependence on him, communication and lack of communication? His helping him, his recovery? Rawang and his life in the building?

8. The homeless man, ill, recovering, wandering the building, the encounter with the girl, the fascination, the sexual encounter? The boss-lady, her approach to him, seduction? His return to Rawang?

9. The young girl, the lodgings, waking up, coming down to the coffee shop and working, looking after the man in the coma? The encounter with the homeless man? Dependence on him?

10. The boss-lady, life in the café, her relatives and their visit, the squabble about the man in the coma? Her sexual needs, the homeless man?

11. The interiors of the building, the pool, people trapped in the water? The flames from the fires in Sumatra? Their gradually covering the city? The effect on the three central characters?

12. The title, the relationships? The sexual relationship between the homeless man and the girl? The Muslim reserved proper relationship between the two men?

13. The finale, the mattress, the three on the mattress, floating in the water? Symbolic – the future?