Popular reviews

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  Review by Holli ★★★½ 3

  wap (watermelon ass pussy)

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  Review by Marcus ★★★★ 5

  a noble and ongoing struggle with my remote control to make sure the neighbours don't think i have the audacity to watch chinese musicals while simultaneously blasting fetish porn on a subwoofer

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  Review by Arsaib Gilbert ★★★★ 2

  [Tsai Ming-liang: Ranked]

  Tsai Ming-liang's recurring thematic motif of communication (or lack thereof) receives an engrossing workout in The Wayward Cloud (Tianbian yi duo yun), the Taiwanese master's seventh feature film. And it starts early, as we witness Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), who was seen auditioning for a porno in Tsai's earlier short, The Skywalk Is Gone (2002), having kinky sex with a voluptuous woman, at the end of which he stuffs large pieces of watermelon in her mouth, as if to prevent her from expressing herself even in an ecstatic state (an act that would later resonate with the film's harrowing final shot).

  During this sequence, Tsai cuts to Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi), now back from Paris (where she traveled to…

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★½ 2

  Would make a good double feature with Trouble Every Day, extremity as a means of expressing the longing and alienation at the heart of its maker's work. Musical interludes and outré pornography as respective outbursts of repressed, directionless individuals and society The finale, in which Tsai implicates the characters, society, the audience and perhaps most especially himself in a voyeuristic scene that climaxes (ahem) with a nightmarish breach of the separation of actor and spectator, is one of the most outlandish, daring, uncomfortable things I've ever seen in a film.

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  Review by Sally Jane Black

  Everything I love about Tsai Ming-liang is here: a dearth of dialogue, musical sequences for the hell of it, a watery motif, striking shots (so so so many), and a sense of alienation. It also adds in graphic sex and fruit, which I found charming enough in this instance.

  Like his other work, this one is intense without belaboring it. It seems to have a lot to say about sex, pornography, and alienation, and how they all tie in together. It is unflinching and poetic, but it sometimes seems to cross the line--at times, it becomes exploitative instead of making its point.

  Still, it's absurd and beautiful and intriguing, and that's all I can ask for.

  December count: 10/100.

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  Review by Jerry McGlothlin ★★★★½ 19

  Fucking away the futility, the frivolity, the banal tedium. Eating away the hopelessness, the near constant discouragement, the puerile passivity. Sleeping away the minutes, the hours, the days.

  Bees bumble about us, pollinating constantly to create what will consume. And when we do (we always do), it leaves behind the sticky residuum that attracts the colonies of ants—we just can’t seem to wash it away.

  Pass under me, ‘round me, straight through me. I am a door, hanging on a loosened hinge as it blows wildly in the wind. Feed me in shadows, leave me with broken teeth. When forbidden fruit is no longer forbade, does it still taste sweet?

  Like fodder the wizened tinder spark under an empty night sky,…

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  Review by Tony (tectactoe) ★★★★ 9

  [74]

  Evident from the opening (second, technically) scene that Tsai is working in a realm of absurdism here; it also establishes the film's allegorical analog between watermelons and austere sex. And if watermelons are to represent sex, then surely water -- in relatively short supply thanks to a drought hanging over Taipei -- represents love : and, perhaps in the most kitschy way possible, Tsai shows us the ridiculousness of a world that confuses sex with love through the parallel guise of a world that tries to substitute watermelon for water. It might serve as a momentary bandage, providing temporary relief : but it's clearly not a sustainable—or assuaging—solution, practically w.r.t. watermelons-for-water and emotionally w.r.t. sex-for-love. Indulgent? Absolutely, and not…

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  Review by Ayush ★★★★★ 10

  Tsai Ming-liang constructs reality built on absurdism. The Wayward Cloud is set in a lonely Taipei; a trademark amongst the films of his which I have seen. The city has become devoid of connection, further fueled by a drought. Watermelons have replaced water, and pornography has replaced love. It becomes evidently clear that Tsai's Taipei has been taken over by alienation.

  The lack of human communication takes on a literal form in The Wayward Cloud; there is a distinct scarcity of dialogues, which is a staple of his brand of slow cinema. Static shots are coupled with wordless actions for most of the runtime, be that in the form of watermelon sex or eating watermelon, and everything in-between. Forming a…

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  Review by Terése Flynn ★★★★ 7

  Tsai Ming-liang is the director of some of my favourite movies. I'm talking about Rebel of the Neon God, Goodbye Dragon Inn and The Hole. And once again this is a movie with some problems with the water in Taipei, and once again the dialogues are hardly present. There're actually more singing than talking in The Wayward Cloud, and then it's not much singing to talk about.

  Anyways, this movie cracks me up from time to time. It's so smart and funny. Maybe it's the contrast between the seriousness and static and the humour in it, and I guess that's one of the things that's really smart about it. At the same time it's an angry film. Tsai is obviously…

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  Review by reibureibu 5

  Fetish object as a surrogate symbol for all manner of concepts: sex, money, nourishment, and child. As a way of connecting individuals separated in crisis. As a substitute for lifeblood in a system upended. It just happens that the object is watermelon.

  This is all presented here through an odd apocalyptic scenario: a drought has gone on long enough that it is more economical to juice watermelons than it is to purchase water. While at first this seems to be just a replacement for liquids, the film examines what happens when a once-costly commodity becomes so cheap it is devalued; now watermelon can be used in odd ways, ways that would normally seem a waste before. In this sense it…

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★½

  82/100

  [Reviewed from TIFF 2005; I'd given it a 74 at Cannes, where I first saw it in the Market.]

  Not really "improved"—I just needed to rewatch the entire film with foreknowledge of its bombshell of an ending. Having done so, I now feel comfortable declaring it Tsai's best film, not to mention a bolder and more devastating quasi-sequel than 2046. Seeing his familiar tropes employed in this hardcore context is as bracing an experience as I've had this year; I staggered out of it at Cannes, and I staggered out of it again this afternoon. Where can Tsai possibly go from here?

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  Review by Shea ★★★★ 9

  I'd sell my soul/To keep my heart true

  Far more than a mood piece, this one has a bit more...well, juice compared to the other Tsai Ming-liang films I've seen. It's not that there's necessarily more happening here, but what is happening is laden with more direct symbolism and, by extension, active commentary.

  When the water runs out, so does its life-giving power - its purity - and so the world turns to something seedier (the esteemed watermelon, in its most unforgettable role since Hausu, standing in for what I imagine are a great many things, on only a few of which I have a grasp).

  The three planes on which the film exists - reality, pornography and fantasy -…