A Wayward Cloud

After watching an excerpt of this in class I decided that I wanted to see the rest of this weird film from the Taiwanese film maker Tsai Ming-liang. The film is about a porn star who starts a relationship with a woman in his building. Water rationing is going on, so throughout the film the alternative, watermelon juice, is constantly being promoted. I found it interesting how Ming-liang associated water and watermelon's with sex. I saw it as a way to look at the funny watermelon craze. It pretty quickly becomes sickening to see all the watermelon. The female character is so hilarious about it. One great scene was when she walked up the stairs carrying a melon under her shirt and once she was to exhausted to continue she pushed it out from under her shirt. Yeah, she gave birth to a watermelon. It becomes even more funny when you realize that the man she's in a relationship with hates watermelon. As th film progressed I started to see her watermelon obsession as a symbol of erotic voyeurism. She births a watermelon, drinks it constantly, and even makes out with it in one scene. I instantly saw a parellel with the scene where she discovers her boyfriend's porno tape, and the final scene where she actually watches him being filmed for porn. She never really has sex with the watermelon and she only really watches her boyfriend have sex, and in a film withso many long sex scenes I found it pretty important that they never had one. I think to take it further, I would say its a way to comment on fetishes and maybe even female objectification. If anyone decides to watch this, I think the female porn stars constant sex accidents goes with this idea.So, as a very weird and wonderful element of the film I thought the watermelon symbol was great. I really enjoyed everything about his film. From the story to the more technical aspects, I was really impressed. At times it felt glamorous, real, disgusting, and fascinating. I loved that I could get all of these things in one experience. I just want to talk about why I think all of the technical decisions made this possible. First, the use of long shots really worked for me as a contrast to the musical scene and also the sex scenes. The feeling of boring or real time events next to action was a great pace for me. I never felt like anything was too much. Secondly, the change in aesthetic from an authentic look to a glossy, more studio feeling added to this contrast. Lastly, I also want to mention the compositions. Every hallway shot was great because you really got the feeling of duration when a character would walk all the way through. Also the use of angled shots were really nicely executed. This was especially nice in all the elevator scenes. There were also shots of looking through a doorway within a frame which was very nice. Except for the graphic sex scenes, the camera was usually tucked away. Close ups didn't happen very often. I loved this because it took away the focus of the characters. This instead emphasized their actions. This was just especially nice because close ups on faces are almost expected things, and this film had little dialogue and character development. Those were the main things I thought I should share. I think as far as class reviews go, this has been my favorite one. I hope someone else will check it out. If anyone's interested, its on my hard drive