Minimalist filmmaking from Malaysian-born/Taiwan-based Ming-liang Tsai on a familiar theme: personal loneliness amid the bustling city hordes. Here, two men: older, presumably wealthy Kang-sheng Lee (regular Tsai alter-ego) and debuting Anong Houngheuangsy as the young masseuse/sex-worker he’s hired to meet in a hotel. Largely shot with long takes in fixed positions (though Tsai does edit within his scenes to slightly change framing), there’s no interaction at first, only alternating looks at their daily routines in single shots that run minutes. About halfway in, a sudden shift to movement thru the city via handheld camera supplies a jarring lift, like changing keys after an hour of C Major chords. Then, back to the fixed position shots. The technique giving off an intimate charge during the massage/sex act, but elsewhere the effect is merely slow rather than hypnotically still.* But for those who can settle in (keep that remote with the Fast-Forward button hidden), the film gathers strength post-climax (so to speak) with an unusual non-cash tip involving, of all things, the musical theme Charles Chaplin wrote for his film LIMELIGHT/’52. True to form, Tsai lets the eight-bar chorus cycle thru seven or eight times. And damned if it doesn’t work exactly as he wants. Even more when reprised.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *At times, you might think your streaming service paused, or a DVD stuck on a frame. A glitch once easy to spot on celluloid stock where the film grain suddenly looked dead, now harder to see in a grain-free digital frame freeze.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Ming-liang Tsai designed the sparsely dialogued film to play without subtitles. An image-oriented view of film going from F.W. Murnau’s THE LAST LAUGH/’24 thru Jacques Tati and beyond.
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