
Tsai Ming-liang
TSAI MING-LIANG’S previous film, The Wayward Cloud, was almost universally hated; at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival screening there were even walkouts in protest by those who found the work pornographic. It is to be hoped that the hostility and disgust it aroused (which I understand but don’t share) will not deter Tsai’s admirers from seeing I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, arguably the director’s finest achievement to date—and perhaps his most intensely personal as well.
Tsai has from the start of his career shown a predilection for long takes—from afar, with minimal, diegetic sound