Tsai at the Louvre, on the set of Visage
Goodbye Dragon Inn
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
Stray Dogs
The River
Vive L'Amour
What Time Is It There?
The Museum of the Moving Image's Tsai Ming-Liang retrospective, beginning tonight with the exquisite
Vive L'Amour (the first Tsai film I saw over two decades ago at the San Francisco Film Festival and still one of his greatest), inspired me to finally post a new entry after nearly a year. So much has been written about his films' recurrent elements of loneliness, water, unrequited longing and unfulfilling sex, the quirky humor, the long takes and beautifully framed shots of urban alienation, but I would like to single out Tsai's career-long devotion to filming the gradually aging face and body of his long-term partner and muse Lee Kang-Sheng. His ten features and numerous shorts constitute for me an unparalleled act of cinematic love.
