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Celebrated auteur Tsai Ming-liang returns to MIFF with his daring [The Wayward Cloud], which won the Fipresci and Silver Bear at Berlin, 2005. Loneliness and disconnection are at the heart of the film, underscored by the radically pared back dialogue. Here, Tsai picks up the threads of his [What Time Is It There']
A young woman named Shiang-Chyi returns to Taipei from Paris, finding the area in front of the main railway station, where once she would meet the watch-seller Hsiao-Kang, has been demolished. She has returned during a severe drought and residents are encouraged to drink the juice of watermelons. The need to save water preoccupies the lonely Shiang-Chyi as much as the suitcase she is unable to open. By chance, she runs into Hsiao-Kang, with whom a romance develops. Shiang-Chyi is unaware that he has become an actor in porn movies, shot in an apartment upstairs from her own. The darkening atmosphere is leavened by musical sequences in which characters lip-sync to Chinese pop songs of the 1960s. But what happens when Shiang-Chyi finds that her apartment has become a centre for an ensemble of puzzling characters and events'
Contains scenes that may offend some viewers
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D/S Tsai Ming-liang P Bruno Pesery WS Wild Bunch L Taiwanese w/English subtitles TD 35mm/col/2004/112mins
Tsai Ming-liang was born in Kuching, Malaysia, in 1957. His films include [What Time Is It There'] (MIFF 02), [Goodbye, Dragon Inn] (MIFF 04).