The Wayward Cloud

The opening scene shows a spread eagled girl with a watermelon between her legs. A man appears and starts to finger fuck the melon and the girl responds appropriately. And so you are welcomed to yet another strange Ming-liang Tsai film. His muse Hsaio-kang (Kang-sheng Lee) and Shiang-chyi (Shiang-chyi Chen) reprise their roles from What Time Is It There?. Hsaio has stopped selling watches and is now a porn star. Taipei that Shiang returns to is one hit with a drought and watermelons are the answer to everything. The film will now act as a personal reminder to never pick another Ming-liang Tsai film, irrespective of how interesting the synopsis reads.

Rating: * +

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone

The film opens in Kuala Lumpuer with a street wizard handing out winning lottery numbers for money. The ever silent Hsiao-kang has a number but no money. He proceeds to get beaten by the street performer and his cronies. Left to die on the street, he is picked by a group of Bangladeshi's migrant workers. One of the workers, Rawang (Norman Atun), nurses him back to health and slowly finds himself making space in his life for Hsiao-kang. Hsiao meanwhile finds himself attracted to a Chinese waitress (Shiang-chyi Chen) in the neighbourhood. As the film winds down, smog envelopes the city, its citizen and the viewer.

Rating: +

Rebels of the Neon God

Dispirited Taiwanese youth flit across the screen. Each rebels in their own way. Ah Tze (Chao-jung Chen), a petty thief walks his life in a disconnected haze. The connection that comes his way in the form of Ah Kuei (Yu-Wen Wang) only scares him. Hsio Kang (Kang-sheng Lee), a dispirited student, rebels against his father by walking out on school. These disparate lives soon form a closed circuit by a random act of violence by Tze against Kang's father in Ming-liang Tsai's first film. Long shots with minimal dialogs succinctly captures the spirit of the youth in the movie conveying their forlorn mood and inner turmoil.

Rating: * * +

What Time Is It There?

A very introspective and beautiful film set across the cities of Taipei and Paris. A girl buys a watch from a street watch seller in Taipei and flies to Paris. He walks around Taipei resetting watches to Paris time. She floats all alone in the city of Paris. Weaved into this storyline is the watch seller's mother who is awaiting for the return of her dead husbands spirit. The common thread is each character's inarticulacy, loneliness and despair.

Rating: * * +