DIRECTED BY Tsai Ming-Liang, 2005
STARRING Lee Kang-Sheng (Hsiao-Kang), Chen Shiang-Chyi (Shiang-Chyi), Sumomo Yozakura (Japanese porn actress)
CERTIFICATION 18: Contains pornography theme, strong sex and one scene of sexual assault
RUN TIME 114 mins, Axiom Films
LANGUAGE Mandarin
COVER QUOTE 'High comedy, high-camp musical numbers and a vast amount of hardcore porn' - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT The Wayward Cloud was released in the UK simultaneously with Tsai's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006). The latter is the better film, but The Wayward Cloud is brighter, camper - and probably the most unusual sex film you'll see.
Born in Malaysia, of Chinese background, Tsai moved to Taipei aged 20 to continue his studies. After a visit home, he intended to make a film about foreign labour but this transformed into a story about porn stars. To Tsai they lead a double life and find it hard to be accepted.
THE PLOT Taiwan is in the grip of drought: the foremost method of hydration is either bottled water or comes from watermelons, which are experiencing a boom. Chen and Lee, from Tsai's earlier What Time Is It Over There (2001), meet in a park; a watchseller in that movie, he now acts in porn films. He helps her find a key and they both try to open a mysterious locked suitcase and hang out together, smoking or cooking. (In one scene in the kitchen, they reenact the lobster escape from Annie Hall, this time with crabs.)
He washes in the water tank on the roof of the building, she fantasises over a giant watermelon she keeps in the fridge. She inserts it up her top and walks around with it as if pregnant, simulating giving birth on the building's stairs. A film crew is making a porn movie in the same building; when Chen finds the lead actress passed out in the lift she takes her back to her flat but the shoot continues, using the unconscious woman. Throughout there are many musical numbers.
THE FILM The Wayward Cloud opens in a generic, grey underpass but much of the film, interspersed by kitsch musical numbers, couldn't be more colourful. Even the watermelons, which lie at the heart of director Tsai's fantasy, glow green and bleed bright red.
The musical numbers involve a glittery reptilian creature basking at night-time in the building's rooftop watertank (the Nat King Cole-like The Half-Moon), a torch song number (sung by actress Lu Yi-Ching) and another featuring conical bra-ed women bearing plungers in a bathroom full of urinals and a man dressed as a penis - literally a knobhead (Be Patient!). In another, a bevy of women fondle a smiling statue of Chiang Kai-Shek, while the Laughing Policeman-inspired song highlight features a cross-dressing date gone wrong and a troupe of dancers bearing umbrellas emblazoned with a watermelon motif (What a Date!).
With its 1970s soundtrack, Deep Throat could be a porn musical, and director Gerry Damiano was keen to see a big-budget cinema that embraced hardcore sex. Albeit as a Taiwanese art-house movie, The Wayward Cloud is somewhere close to meeting his dreams, with its over-the-top musical numbers.
While the songs in Tsai's movie are surprising populous - on a par with Les Demoiselles de Rochefort at times - the non-musical scenes tend to feature one person on his or her own, and even when there are more people present - the couple of Lee and Chen, or the porn film crew - very little is said, if anything. The songs feature essentially the only dialogue in the movie.
By contrast, the amateur porn shoot in Lucas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart is a far more chatty, argumentative affair. The subjects in both films are equally isolated from the outside world: Moodysson's characters bound to their flat, those in Tsai's film getting no further than their building's stairs or lift, which seems to go nowhere. Both directors are concerned with their characters as outsiders: an extreme of embodiment of the urban alienation which is a favourite theme of their films.
Despite its extreme scenarios and premise, there is no full-frontal nudity in The Wayward Cloud. There is, however, the rape of the porn actress while she is unconscious so that the film's shoot can continue unhindered. It could be funny if it weren't unconscionable. Chen has previously recognised her from a porn DVD she watches wide-eyed; she comes to realise her partner Lee's new profession.
At the begininning of the film, Chen is presented as somewhat unhinged, hanging around road works insisting she has lost her key amid the builders' heavy machinery. She does find her key, however, and Lee helps her dig it up from the freshly laid tarmac. Water wells up in the hole he has created but, even in these drought-afflicted times, it is ignored.
KEY SCENES Chapter 1, 2:12 A woman in a nurse's uniform lies splayed on a bed. Between her legs is half a very large watermelon. A man in a white coat first licks and then puts his finger in the watermelon, moving it in and out firmly. He inserts more fingers and moves them more vigorously. The woman acts as if he is jacking her off; he feeds her big pieces of the fruit and licks the juice off her naked body. They have sex with him wearing the carved-out watermelon shell like a helmet.
Chapter 5, 45:52 The porn crew are filming a scene in a bathroom. The porn star is bent over the woman, fucking her from behind, as a crew member improvises the effect of a shower using water bottles. In disgust, he finally runs out of water. They continue with some very murky-looking green water.
Chapter 7, 1:02:00; 1:05:24 The man masturbates in a doorway watching the Japanese female star playing with herself on a kitchen counter. She uses a small water bottle but stops when the top comes off; a crew member is ordered to help.
Chapter 10, 1:34:00 In the final scene, the male porn star is filmed having sex with his unconscious female counterpart. The crew variously hold up or manipulate her body as required. Chen watches them and becomes vocally aroused; at the crucial moment, the porn actor leaps up and comes in her mouth.
FURTHER VIEWING Lee Kang-Sheng stars in all of Tsai's films from their debut Rebel of the Neon God (1992), usually lending his name to his characters. They met in a video games arcade.
KEY QUOTE 'The [bottle] cap's inside the Japanese girl. Go see' - porn film director
BONUS CURIO For the film, Tsai made star Lee die his pubic hair 'a golden colour, like a lion's mane.'
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