Tag: Tsai Ming-Liang

Our dirty questions to Tsai Ming-Liang

Posted on by victorfraga

Having been a huge fan of the 65-year-old director – perhaps the most prominent LGBT+ filmmaker in Asia and certainly one of the biggest exponents of slow cinema in the world -, I couldn’t wait to meet Tsai Ming-liang in person. I first watched The River (1997) when I was still a teenager in my native Brazil while working at the Sao Paulo Film Festival, in the year then film was originally launched. Ming-liang’s tender and subversive sensibility shocked and moved me profoundly. He has firmly remained on my radar since.

He attended the 76th edition of the Locarno Film Festival. On August 3rd, he received the Career Leopard Award in a nearly packed Piazza Grande (which can host a whopping 8,000 film-lovers). Giona A. Nazzaro, the Festival’s Artistic Director explains: “The cinema of Tsai Ming-liang entails a passionate convergence of stories and languages. From the outset he has been able to capture the multiple identities of a creative pathway through the complex articulations of both Taiwanese history and his personal story as a Chinese moving between Malaysia and Taiwan”.

The art exhibition entitled Moving Portraits was also held in Locarno. Its included experimental audiovisual works such as exhibition Transformation (2012), Your Face (2018) and The Tree (2021), curated byKevin B. Lee. His experimental pieces, much like his feature films, are very slow-paced and require a lot of love – and hours – in order to be appreciated in their full splendour.

Ming-liang was born in Malaysia to Taiwanese parents, and he moved to Taipei at the age of 10, where he still resides. He has a career spanning more than three decades, and 11 feature films. He won many prestigious prizes around the world, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for Vive L’Amour (1994). The remained particularly active in the 1990s and 2000s, when he became widely recognised for the topics of unfulfilled sexuality, loneliness, alienation and the passage of time. His films have since became more sparse, with most of his recent output dedicated to exhibitions. He only made one feature film in the ’10s, the tragic and gloomy Stray Dogs (2013). His last film Days was released three years ago.

The director does not speak any English, and our brief interview was aided by a sharp interpreter, courtesy of the Festival. We started our conversation discussing realism. “My films come from life, real life. That’s why I show a lot of loneliness. The characters show their personality through behaviour, not words. I really care about authenticity, that’s one of my biggest pursuits. I want audiences to feel this authenticity. That’s why I don’t leave much room for performance. In general, ordinary actors are afraid of not being able to perform. On the other hand, non-professional actors don’t know how to perform, and instead just do what they are asked to do. Even with non-professionals, I don’t give many instructions. I just put them in certain space and environments, and their own actions or behaviours will take care of the rest. And sometimes these reactions are completely unexpected”.

Ming-liang has consistently used a combination of professional and non-professional actors in his films, and he has a very close relationship with them, particularly 54-year-old Lee Kang-sheng, who has starred in every single one of his 11 feature films. “I live very close to my actors, physically and figuratively. Lee Kang-sheng lives in the same neighbourhood as me. So I observe him, I often watch his life”. He then explains that his closeness enables him to observe the passage of time more effectively, and that he intends to do a film about ageing. “I want to shoot a movie about myself at the age of 60. Because that’s when I realised my body is going through a lot of changes. But I want Kang-sheng to play that role, so I am waiting for him to turn 60”. The passing of time is a recurring topic in many of Ming-liang’s movies (such as 2001’s What Time is It There and Days), and also in his filmography as a whole (as the director observes Kang-sheng’s real-life ageing).

We also talked about the importance of sounds, and their purpose on the elusive search for authenticity: “My films are full of sounds. These are sounds of everyday life, reality replaces the music score. Sometimes these sounds are exaggerated. The objective is to highlight the inner loneliness of the characters. [We hear these sounds] as if they were close to their ears”. I asked him why I asked why Days is “intentionally unsubtitled” (as announced in the beginning of the film). “I don’t really believe in film dialogues. They are not real. That’s just too dramatic”, he explains in his soft and calm voice.

Next, we talked about equality rights. His face lit up, and the director became visibly proud when I asked him about Taiwan being the first country in Asia to legalise gay marriage (in May 2019), and whether he thought that his art played a role in changing the nation’s hearts. He gives a prompt and confident answer: “Yes, I think that my films contributed to same-sex marriage. I really appreciate these changes in Taiwan. I arrived in Taiwan 30 years ago, and I met a local activist who was campaigning for gay rights with placards on the streets back then, and he is still doing that. I want to ask you a question. How many different types of people do you think God created? Just men and women? Gays don’t decide they become gay, right? Flowers can be green, yellow or red. In Taiwan the young generation can really be themselves. I’m glad to live in such a place”.

We finished our interview by talking about another topic close to Ming-liang’s heart (and other parts of his anatomy). I asked him: “Is it ok if we talk about sex?”. He promptly replied “yes”, in English and before the question was translated, with a big smile on his face. I carried on: “Sex in your films is very beautiful, but also very subversive. You get a huge age gap [Days], incest (The River], prostitution [What Time is It There?, Days] and even watermelons [The Wayward Cloud, 2005]. Is subversive sex more beautiful than traditional sex?”. He retorted: “I like sex a lot. But I’m old now! The sex that you see in my movies is actually beautified. Sex in real life is like eating, or other human relations. The more authentic part of sex isn’t so beautiful, not so perfect. When audiences look at sex in my films, they don’t just see sex, they also see dominance, the inability of communicate and loneliness. In Days, for example, you cannot deny that sex was transactional, yet you cannot deny it brought consolation to a lonely person”.

Let’s hope that Tsai Ming-liang’s future projects come to fruition, that there is no shortage of sex – beautified or not -, and that we can continue to observe the passing of time in the life of the artist and his favourite actor Kang-sheng.

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Tsai Ming Liang is pictured at the top and at the bottom of this article (alongside Victor Fraga), snapped by Victor Fraga. The image at the middle is a still from Days.

Days (Rizi)

Posted on by victorfraga

Jean-Luc Godard has infamously thrown tantrums when his films were shown with subtitles against his will. Such was the case with Notre musique in Cannes in 2004, which left the French provocateur infuriated. Sixty-two year-old Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-ling has preempted this possibility by adding the following words to the beginning of his latest feature: “this movie is intentionally unsubtitled”. Yet the two directors couldn’t be more different in their objectives: Godard wishes to alienate his viewers, while Ming-liang wants to engage them, if very slowly.

The pace of Days remains is extremely observational. The takes are very, very long. The camera is almost entirely still, allowing viewers to investigate every nook and cranny of the slowly moving images. This is not slow motion. This is rather the pace of real life. The problem is that most of us are used to such fast-paced cinema that realism can cause estrangement. Unsurprisingly, there were a few casualties: about 10 people – likely unfamiliar with Ming-liang’s filmmaking – walked out of the cinema in the first 30 minutes of this 127-minute drama.

We watch a male wash lettuce and chop cucumbers for nearly 10 minutes. We gaze into the eyes of a man – barely a blink – in bed for minutes. We literally stare at a wall – barely a sound – for much longer than you may have ever done. This is a borderline sensory experience. A meditation exercise. An opportunity to immerse yourself in the world exactly as it is, to pay attention to the details that otherwise remain unnoticed. It is thoroughly enjoyable if you allow yourself to sit back and engage in the very subtle yet very affecting action.

The narrative does exist. It just happens to be a very simple one. Two men carry on with their lives as normal on the streets of Taipei. One of them (Anong Houngheuangsy) is young and poor, and prepares a meal in his humble dwelling. The other one (Lee Kang) is a little older and seemingly wealthy, judging by the hotel room that he hires. This is where they meet. The conversations are sparse and wilfully “unsubtitled”. The younger man gives the older man a sensual massage, which gradually develops into full-on sex. The action is delicate and sensual, with a palpable sense of intimacy. The two characters develop a bond, helped by the quietly effervescent chemistry between the two actors. There’s also a touch of tenderness. The older man gives a tiny music box to the young one, which appears again in the end of the movie. The two men are inextricably linked through their memories, embodied by the unusual trinket.

Tsai Ming-liang’s uses various devices from his previous films, which fans will easily recognise. The copious amount of water (from the rain, hoses, sweat, etc) represents the fluidity of the fleeting moments, and also the flow of sex. The liquid bonds the two bodies, and it also serves to cleanse them. Water played a central role in films such as The River (1997) and Wayward Cloud (2005), with even the titles alluding to the vital liquid. Plus, Tsai Ming-liang’s latest movie climaxes in a slow and laconic gay sex scene between an older and a younger man, just like in the 1997 movie. The queer Asian filmmaker has once again crafted a quietly transgressive masterpiece. Indeed a precious gem. Perhaps not the dearest jewel in the crown of the unusual king, but still a very valuable stone.

Days is showed in Competition at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It premieres in the UK in October, as part of the BFI London Film Festival.