Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Martin Bradley "The Wayward Cloud" opens with a scene of sex with a watermelon though neither the melon nor the sex look particularly appetizing. We are in Taiwan and there's a heatwave which might explain the copious amounts of nudity as well as the watermelons if not the behavior of the characters. Ming-Liang Tsai's film, (it appears it follows on from earlier work but this is the first of his films I've seen), doesn't really have much of a plot and very little in the way of dialogue and what 'plot' there is doesn't really make a lot of sense, (the bloke who metamorphoses into a sea-creature in a large tank and breaks into song is only the first of several very camp musical numbers). Unfortunately this picture, which lasts close to two hours, is aimed very much at an art-house audience who like their sex movies to be vague and abstract rather than simply down and dirty, (even the money-shot is basically abstract). Of course, you could be forgiven for thinking that the very explicit sex scenes have, within them, a sense of comedy or at least are meant to be 'tongue-in-cheek', (no pun intended), and that the musical interludes are aimed at a largely gay audience. Either way, "The Wayward Cloud" isn't going to wow them in Middle America or down at the multiplexes but it's sufficiently pretentious and sufficiently weird to be at least interesting. I may have been perplexed but I was certainly never bored.

Monsieur_Arkadin The founder of the "new novel" and screenwriter for Last Year at Marienbad Alain Robbe-Grillet said: "A new form will always seem more or less an absence of any form at all, since it is unconsciously judged by reference to the consecrated forms." This is certainly true of the films of Tsai Ming-Liang, and The Wayward Cloud is one of his most daring attacks on traditional cinematic form yet. We follow two characters: Hsiao-kang (the same protagonist as in eight of Tsai's nine features. Acting as an "Antoine Doinel" for our modern age of isolation and loneliness) and Shiang-chyi as his would be lover. The two however, are doomed never to celebrate their love for each other fully. Our two protagonists never express themselves with words, and don't speak more than one sentence each throughout the film. Both sentences come when they see each other for the first time since Tsai's previous film What Time is it There? Tsai's work within the Contemporary Contemplative Cinema paradigm is essential, because he has elevated the process to be more than simply a rejection of the sheep-like adherence to standard narrative techniques, but also the best possible means of expression of the themes and philosophy he is interested in exploring. The events of The Wayward Cloud unfold the way they do because it's the only way they can unfold for them to have any meaning. The style is informed by the content of the film. The rejection of dialogue, the refusal to cut, the wariness of close- ups, the static "objective" camera informs our understanding of the themes. The entire film is about emptiness. The characters lives are empty, the decrepit building they live in is empty, the version of Taipei they live in is empty (even as the news story on t.v. hints at a larger population somewhere) the images they are framed in are empty, and the majority of the time they spend in the movie is empty. They are seen sleeping on park benches, laying on the floor, smoking cigarettes, walking down endless hallways, and taking long elevator rides. There are five scenes throughout the film which are not empty and all five of the scenes happen to be musical numbers. These numbers serve as a sort of internal monologue for our two protagonists, and then curiously for two minor characters who share a total of about 6 minutes of screen time and are Hsiao-kang's partners in two different porn shoots he works on. When the film shows its teeth in the disturbing final minutes, the audience is not prepared. With so much of the film revolving around the banality of existence in a lonely empty world, and at best the minor joys which come from things such as a cigarette or cooking live crabs, it is shocking for a major life event to actually take place. This allows for maximum reflexivity among the audience and also introduces a rare visceral element to the film. What once seemed cold, seems bright by comparison. The reading of the ending is something few people can agree on. The seemingly violent sexual contact is off-putting, but could be read as a joyful release for two characters who clearly belong together. However, the manner of their sexual joining is so distinctly not "correct." Their only sexual contact is through a hole in a wall, at once allowing them the connection they so desire, but reinforcing the disconnect which been present throughout the film.The bittersweet connection seems to have more bitter than sweet, bringing Hsiao-kang back to his lonely isolated contemporary world filled with empty frames and empty time. It is fitting that the final image is one of the most empty framing wise, and one of the longest feeling shots time-wise in the entire film. The Wayward Cloud is a film which both stands on it's own terms as a significant work within an important movement in the redefining of narrative cinema, and as a learning tool when it comes to understanding that redefinition. It's an important exploration of the narrative form which has held steady for much too long, and in recent years has seemed more than ever to be hitting the apex of possible regurgitations. Claims that cinema is dead are nothing new, but have been becoming louder and more vehement among film purists in recent years. They are silly. Cinema cannot be dead when films such as this exist as proof that narrative cinema has yet to be explored to its fullest potential. If we have yet to even fully explore narrative, then we certainly have quite a ways to go before cinema as a whole is used up. This film and indeed the CCC movement overall, are a beacon of hope for the medium.

Joseph Sylvers What a strange, strange, strange film. Strangest thing about this is that it was a huge hit in Taiwan, grossing 20 million dollars when the average film in the country makes under a million. When you see a cover with a girl tongue kissing a watermelon, it is understandable to think "I'll pass", but in this case you would be missing out.As best I can describe, this is a film about two neighbors who live in an apartment building in Taiwan during an unusually hot summer and inexplicable water shortage. One woman named Shiang-chyi Chen sits around her apartment eating watermelon, while her next door neighbor Kang-sheng Lee makes hardcore porn films (which in the opening scene involve a watermelon between a woman's legs).The film is mostly minimalist and truly beautiful in its austere compositions and delicate urban electric light; shadows and silhouettes are repeat motif used gorgeously. This is interspersed with scenes of graphic sex, albeit no more than you would see in "Crash", "Short Bus", or "WR. Mysteries of the Organism", but just as explicit. The same long takes which lingered on an empty hallway now assume the position of Peeping Tom.The detached view of sexuality would seem indebted to films like "Crash" and "Salo" where the body is reduced to a writhing mindless thing with genitals. This becomes especially apparent in the last scene, where a women is unconscious/dead (there is some debate between whether this porn actress is dead or passed out from heat exhaustion), but the show must go on, and the crew literally props her up in a variety of positions so the Lee can have sex with her.This is all watched by Chen, who discovers only moments before when she finds the porn starlet passed out in the elevator, and consequently what Lee does for a living. Their flirting and relationship build up being the emotional heart of the film, which repeats images of watermelon and bottled water, again and again. Our heroin is often scene rubbing water on her arms while alone, juxtaposed with our hero covered in his and someone' else's sweat. They even share Annie Hall homage, of giddily picking up crabs from the kitchen floor. And they laugh, and they love, and the film swerves back and forth between their two perspectives, meeting in an occasional musical number.It's also worth mentioning that this is a musical. There are about 5 or 6 full on musical numbers, and not merely spontaneous karaoke affairs like "Happiness Of The Katakari's", but full on "Singing In The Rain" level classical Hollywood show-stoppers (one song includes a crowd with umbrellas) if directed by Tarsem. In one scene a character becomes a merman and serenades the moon from a water tower. In another Alice in Wonderland like giant flowers appear around the statue of a Taiwanese politician. In yet another after our hero is having some trouble getting it up, there is a song where a man wearing a life-size penis-suit is surrounded by dancing girls wearing plastic buckets on their heads, in a public bathroom. I can't stress enough how genuinely fantastic (from a technical film standpoint), and absurdly incredible they are.The songs themselves are assorted 60's and modern soul and folk sounds from Taiwan, and are all unique and lovely in their own right. Weird as all this sounds, it comes together in a smashingly perverse, erotic, socially critical, and emotionally devastating climax, you might find in a Lars Von Trier film at his most crafty like "The Idiots" or "Dogville" "Goodbye Dragon Inn" Ming Ling Tsai's previous directorial effort was so rigid in never moving it's camera's and keeping it's character's in the dark, it distracted from how formally inventive and cinematically fresh the whole thing was. "The Wayward Cloud" as a follow up has no such difficulties, getting its vitality up and keeping it up. It veers between the common and the theatrical so organically it stops feeling strange when the sing-along, follow the money shots, which flow into images of watermelons floating down a river.As for what "Wayward Cloud" means, I would say it's a love story. The two lead characters, I later read, were in a previous Ming-liang Tsia's film called, "What Time Is It There?" and this is their "Before Sunset" second chance at love. It would have been simple for Ming-liang Tsia, to make a moody little film, about an alienated women infatuated with an alienated man, doing alienated things, which is basically what the film is. However like a true artist Miang Liang imbues the proceedings with a cinematic spirit, through editing, cinematography, MUSIC, and subdued/wildly theatrical performances that becomes transcendent of the films run-of-the-mill social yearnings for genuine connection in the cold, cruel, world. I can't think of any film as repulsive, arousing, beautiful, fun, and sad, at least not with all those gears running at once like they are here.In a way I thought it was a happy ending. The couple has come together right? No more lifeless proxy sex with sleeping girls and emotional amateur porn, and no more isolated peeking around the corner from what we desire while waiting for the water (life's lubricant) to return. I don't know, maybe I'm all wrong, and our heroine's tears are from a place of even deeper sadness. Or maybe their courtship was so convincing and extraordinarily arranged that I was rooting for the couple to come together, regardless of their strange and horrible acts.Only one thing is certain, the watermelon has lost its innocence in the fruit kingdom, it must now go in the adult's only banana and kumquat, sectioned off by beads, part of the produce aisle.

bastard wisher Somehow, amazingly, this film manages to correct nearly every problem I've had with Tsai Ming-Liang's work so far, and yet at the same time amplify, if anything, everything I love about his films to begin with. At last he has made a film that actually leads up to something resembling a satisfying climax (very literally, actually). Also, it may just be that I saw it in a theater, but the cinematography seemed far and away much better than any of his previous films. It's easily one of the most beautiful films, visually, that I've ever seen, up there with the best of Wong Kar-Wai, no question. It's also, somewhat oddly, both his most accessible film (possibly) and also, by far, his most confrontational and edgy. This is, basically, his "Brown Bunny" or "Ken Park", and i mean that in the best possible way. That said, it may not be his most consistent film, but it is probably his most rewarding. Also, watching it with an audience that laughed at all the right places was rather remarkable. At times I felt like Tsai Ming-Liang was playing up to the audience's expectations too much, but my opinion in that regard was completely changed by the end of the film.