I finished watching the 3rd of the 4 Tsai ming liang dvd i bought. Vive L'amour is the most engaging so far. Rebel of the Neon God is great too but the sex scenes in Vive is more natural and compelling. The actors Jung and Kang had by this film become so competent in erotic shots, I felt I was intruding in someone's behind the door moments.
The huge empty apartments and urn space and clothes the lead characters tried to sell signifies a bundle of things. All 3 people are in sales line (in a capitalist economy every job is about selling products/services in one way or another and it all spirals down to selling one thing - our souls). In fact the only time they exchange words was when they are at their trades or expressing a need (cigarette, sex) or asking mundane question "What so you work as?".
Ah Chen sells women's clothings and he tries to sell himself (for casual sex that is) to this lady he met in a cafe. She sells apartments; the backdrop for almost all the scenes & the huge void spaces signifies the hole urbanites wall themselves in day in day out. Kang sells urn space (hahahaha his clients can't even talk); this scene where a fellow sales person tries to market a package space so that the mahjong friends or family members can sit side by side when all passes on is a big irony cos why do we need to be next to each other after death when we can't talk yet in living existence, we don't even wanna communicate with each other!
Extending to a larger social perspective, the repressed yet aimless desires of the characters is represented by Burroughsian "algebra of need"; a metaphor for any dependency situation where power drives replace forbidden actual pleasures and so take on a destructive pleasure of their own (Eric Mottram - William Burroughs: the algebra of need).
All those everyday scenes in the movie is a mirror of the lives of you and me. It could well be a movie of me crapping in the toilet. Depressing yet so touching at the same time. It was a long time since I watched a film I wanna crap a lot about. And ironically it is a film so void of conversations that speaks the most about our inability to communicate.
Ah Chen is so appealing in his Aaron Kwok mop hairstyle and leather jacket. Gosh, I can't believe I get turned on by him. Damn, his dimples are cute and cheeky. Hell, that lean tanned body. And the actress has such great plump arse!
A great essay on Tsai's work
here.
