I Don't Want To Sleep Alone

I am finding that Ming-liang Tsai is a hard director to get a hold on since I have gone back and started watching his filmography from the beginning after being impressed with recent efforts. The last film directed by Tsai I saw, Wayward Clouds (2005). It was alternately challenging and impressive for me. And it's concluding scene may have scared me for life-it certainly drives his point home...in spades. His follow up, I Don't Want To Sleep Alone (2006) is a departure in several respects. For one, it is the first film that he made in his country of birth, Malaysia. That being said, he has found the most decrepit, decaying and crumbling, alienating locations in Kuala Lumpur to continue his investigation of his great theme: urban alienation. Hsiao-kang (played by Tsai’s constant muse, Lee Kang-sheng) has himself been torn in two. When first seen, he is bald and is lying comatose in a hospital bed. (Die Zauberflöte plays on the boom box next to him: the film was financed as part of the Mozart-celebrating New Crowned Hope project.) However, Hsiao-kang then reappears, with a mop of long stringy hair and facial hair. The two stories intersect, but it is difficult to ascertain whether it is a dream or artistic editing that draws parallels between the two stories. That being said I am always moved by the visual poetry of the films of Tsai and this film is no exception-the decrepit building where the Asian refugees of the Asian crisis (pictured above) is poetically squalid and picturesque. As always Tsai's cinematographer exquisitely frame shots and has interesting long takes. It requires patience, but the beauty of his films always surfaces. Thankfully (after the last film!), this one ends on a serene, uplifting note.