The Wayward Cloud: Melon obsession

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.'

Shortbus: Searching for the Big O in NYC

DIRECTED BY John Cameron Mitchell, 2006

STARRING Sook-Yin Lee (Sofia), Paul Dawson (James), Lindsay Beamish (Severin), PJ DeBoy (Jamie), Raphael Barker (Rob), Peter Stickles (Caleb), Jay Brannan (Ceth), Justin Bond

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains strong real sex

RUN TIME 90 mins approx, Universal

COVERLINE 'Open your mind. And everything else'

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH IT As GQ proclaims on the DVD cover, 'The most sexually explicit film to go on general release.' And, if you've ever wondered about those Michael Flatley rumours, this is your chance to see the act of auto-fellation.

THE PLOT A variety of characters living in New York are connected by sex club Shortbus; as the city suffers a series of electrical 'brown outs' they're looking for more sex, happier relationships, or both. Sofia meets couple Jamie and James through her work as a therapist and they introduce her to Shortbus; there she meets dominatrix Severin and the pair agree to talk through their various problems.

After five years together, Jamie and James decide to open up their relationship and they meet Ceth at the club; neighbour Caleb is obsessed with James, whom he follows everywhere and photographs. After Caleb rescues James following a suicide attempt by the latter, all the characters regroup at Shortbus in a black out. A carnival-esque atmosphere breaks out.

THE FILM Shortbus is famed for putting real sex in a relatively mainstream picture - it touts itself as an 'E-XXX-tremely romantic comedy'. Certainly its reputation will have further spread with its availability on DVD. What is remarkable about this film is it's no-nonsense attitude to gay sex. Many of the other films featured in this blog, if they feature gay themes at all, are ambivalent in their attitude to homosexuality, if not downright homophobic. Even the lead character in Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell is antipathetic towards gay men: according to her, they don't look at women, which is not something I've ever heard before.

A little like Lucas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart, the characters in Shortbus are slightly damaged: Jamie can't seem to get over his past as a child actor; his partner James is a bipolar former hustler; Sofia, a sex therapist ('I prefer "couples counsellor"'), has never had an orgasm; her husband Rob behaves like a spoilt child; dominatrix Severin has never had a relationship; lovestruck Caleb is a stalker. The only well-balanced personality here is Justin Bond (of cabaret duo Kiki and Herb), playing himself as the manager of Shortbus; he's the sole likeable character among much therapy-speak and self-centred obsessionalism.

The film does sometimes feel a little close to it workshop roots: a game of truth or dare is a banal way to have characters reveal something of themselves. There are plenty of nice touches, though, not least the lovely animation of New York (by John Bair) that links the scenes, and the soundtrack by Yo La Tengo, which also features Scott Matthew, Anita O'Day and Animal Collective.

It soon becomes clear depressive James is preparing the way for suicide: he is opening up his five-year relationship with Jamie to secure a new partner for his boyfriend, as well as making a videotape of memories for Jamie. Resolution for Sofia, who has only ever slept with her husband, seems more difficult to pin down. Again like in A Hole in My Heart, Sofia tries vigorously to make herself come with a vibrator on the bathroom floor but is distracted by her husband, who is wanking to the internet next door. Attracted throughout by a couple at the club credited as 'beautiful couple' (they really are), Sofia is finally shown with them while Rob looks on.

There are big themes here: an elderly man who says he is a former mayor of the city consoles himself that he did all he could to contain the AIDS crisis, and one of the first shots of New York is of Ground Zero. Shortbus works best as a post-9/11 parable of a city powered by sexual energy. It also says, you may want or need to be in a relationship, it may just not be the right one.

KEY SCENES Chapter 1, 3:25 The central characters are introduced, having sex: Sofia and Rob are banging away on a piano; dominatrix Severin is flogging a preppie client, and James is sucking himself off on video.

Chapter 5, 35:00 Jamie, James and Ceth have sex together. When Ceth calls for a bit more noise, the trio breaks into the Star-Spangled Banner.

Chapter 10, 1:19:51 A counterpoint to the opening scene, where the realigned couples have sex, including Caleb and James, and Sofia on her own on a fantasy, lamp-lit shoreline.

FURTHER VIEWING The film James makes for Jamie in Shortbus feels and looks very similar to Jonathan Caouette's remarkable 2003 documentary Tarnation, which Mitchell executive produced. Caouette has assembled almost 20 years of home video footage, including Super-8 and even answering machine messages, chronicling his mother's depression and its effect on him. Their stories are shocking but the resulting film is very beautiful.

KEY QUOTE 'Voyeurism is participation' - Maitre d' at Shortbus

A Hole in My Heart: Blessed be the pornographers

DIRECTED BY Lucas Moodysson, 2004

STARRING Björn Almroth (Erik), Sanna Bråding (Tess), Thorsten Flinck (Rickard), Goran Marjanovic (Geko)

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains strong sex, sex references and surgical images

RUN TIME 93 mins approx, Metrodome

LANGUAGE Swedish

COVER QUOTE 'Moodysson's most radical and daring film to date' - The Guardian

WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH IT Swedish director Moodysson delves into the world of homemade porn.

THE PLOT Teen Erik lives at home with his father, Rickard, who's making a porn film in the living room, with friend Geko and wannabe star Tess. Erik is a loner who stays in his room listening to industrial music on his headphones and keeps pet earthworms; the others encourage Tess to have sex with him, but slowly the two form a tentative friendship. The porn shoot becomes increasingly extreme as the three protagonists spend time in each other's company and drink more; after filming one particularly violent scene, Tess runs away. When she returns she brings some food with her; the dinner that follows descends into pandemonium, an atmosphere that's little helped when Geko later lets slip a secret from Rickard's childhood.

THE FILM From the despair Moodysson plumbs in Lilya 4-Ever (2002), you may be surprised to hear that the director offers some hope in A Hole in My Heart, especially as it features many graphic and disturbing scenes. The assault begins immediately with loud bursts of static noise and clips of organs, objects being inserted into various orifices and other close-ups (eyes and skin, often). It's a confusing montage whose contents gradually reveal themselves throughout the movie but, if you're going to stick with A Hole, you can't say you haven't been warned.

Broadly, Moodysson draws parallels here between the need for attention of amateur porn stars and Big Brother contestants; these are wounded people trying to live up to a sexualised image of the world they've bought into. Characters talk to camera and step into a wardrobe, as if to enter the famous BB diary room. Tess has been turned down for the TV show but is happy to do anything to appear in a porn film; she boasts of having had an operation to have her labia reduced, and many of the surgical clips show just that procedure. This was some time before the furore over Lars von Trier's Antichrist.

Latterly it becomes clear that some of the images we've seen, of plastic figures being pushed into a vagina or anus, feature a latex sex toy and not a real person. Action Man- and Barbie doll-type figures are used to illustrate some of the scenes, including sex between Tess, Rickard and Geko, though the real thing is shown as well. Tess is seen frantically trying to make herself come too, alone on the bathroom floor.

From the experimental, industrial music that son Erik listens to on his headphones, the soundtrack often jarringly switches to upbeat pop, as if the porn shoot were an MTV-style reality soap. (A noose hangs in the middle of Erik's room and on the window is a paper cross.) At one point the characters start playing football in the flat, an ironic take on the happy family scene at the end of Moodysson's Together (2000).

In an attempt to bond with his son, Rickard sets up a shooting target in the flat using a centrefold of a naked woman, her head replaced by the bull's eye; Rickard and Geko fire air rifles at the model's breasts and vagina until there is nothing left but black gaps. Dressed in a mask and motorcycle helmet the two men confront Tess for a scene in their porn film, until she escapes from the flat, taking her belongings with her.

Erik says that his earthworms will transform into butterflies; when Geko falls asleep in the scene of double penetration, he dreams of UFOs and corn circles. When Tess runs away, she collapses in a supermarket car park. Real-life is not enough for her: 'Everyone's so boring out there,' she complains, 'people are so ugly.' (Earlier on, she has read out a list of different types of cosmetic surgery to camera; idiosyncratically, there's also a discussion of the repercussions of education policy later.)

Famously, Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove was supposed to have a ended with a custard pie fight in the war room between the various heads of states; A Hole in My Heart climaxes with a particularly graphic food fight which, along with the revelation that Rickard suffered abuse as a child from his father, Erik's grandfather, provides catharsis. The characters break out of the confines of the flat and, for pretty much the first time, we see the sky. Tess and Erik play a morbid game where they try and fit themselves into laundrette drying machines, this time more like something from Jackass. There is finally laughter, though for many viewers it may come too late.

KEY SCENES Chapter 4, 23:01 Geko, Rickard and Tess take part in a threesome on Rickard's fold-out bed. The action is foregrounded by a demonstration using children's action figures. During the scene, bluntly titled 'DP' on the DVD, Geko dreams that he's fallen alseep; when he wakes up he discovers he was asleep, much to Tess's amusement and Rickard's anger.
Chapter 7, 41:04 Tess makes herself up and dresses for the filming of another scene; when the men come out their faces are masked and they're wielding a baseball bat. At first verbal threats are made and then the scene becomes increasingly dark; when Tess is physically threatened she gets up and leaves.
Chapter 10, 1:04:56 Food is sprayed around the flat and over the three characters involved in filming the porn film; snacks, and even washing up liquid, are stuffed and poured into Tess's mouth. Geko pees into a wine glass he says he will make her drink; he is then sick into her mouth.

FURTHER VIEWING Moodysson's earlier work is surprisingly heartwarming and may come as welcome relief following A Hole in My Heart and its extremely bleak predecessor, Lilya 4-Ever. Fucking Amal (released here as Show Me Love, 1998) is the story of a gay girl trying to get by at school; it's unromantic, but uplifting nonetheless, boasting tremendous central performances from Alexandra Dahlstrom and Rebecka Liljeberg. It's easy to remember Together for the climactic, snowy football kickabout which bonds the film's cast of disillusioned hippies, split families and wounded children.

After A Hole in My Heart, Moodysson continued his move from art-house cinema into film-making that is more appropriate for the art gallery with Container (2007). A woman and a fat man fool about onscreen in black and white. Don't bother.

KEY QUOTE 'You don't like women, that's the thing' - Erik

BONUS CURIO Moodysson claimed in an interview with the Guardian that a Swedish couple was caught having sex in a cinema in during a screening of A Hole in My Heart, which seems unlikely. He sounds heartened by the prospect.