A young woman named Shiang-Chyi returns from France to discover that the promenade in front of the main railway station in Taipei has been torn down and she can no longer meet watch salesman Hsiao-Kang there. The whole city is beset by a extreme water shortage and Shiang-Chyi is obliged to either steal water from her workplace or drink watermelon juice. The need to save water seems to preoccupy the lonely Shiang-Chyi just as much as a suitcase she is having trouble opening. One day she runs into
Hsiao-Kang by chance in the park and a tender romance with daily trysts at Shiang-Chyi's apartment ensues. What Shiang-Chyi doesn't know is that Hsiao-Kang is now working as an actor in porn films and that these videos are even made in a neighbouring apartment of the building where she lives. The puzzling narrative is interspersed by lively and imaginative musical sequences that transport the viewer away from the mysterious things that take place in Shiang-Chyi's apartment. Meanwhile, the young woman's abode becomes a refuge for a number of very strange characters.
The Taiwanese sex musical The Way ward Cloud is notable for its bizarre uses of watermelons. I won't give you the details because my editor would just cut them out.
The Wayward Cloud finds Ming-liang in a rut and unable to elevate his neon wilderness to the heights of the rest of his consistently fascinating oeuvre.
Characters make love, make meals, make conversation - though not much - and in moments of transcendence remake the world according to their fantasies and longings.
The madcap finale to a loose trilogy from Taiwanese director Tsi Ming-Liang, and whilst emphatically not to all tastes, fans of the obscene, the experimental and the outrageous should make every effort to get along.
A porn stud romances a shy girl during a drought in Taiwan; four hallucinatory musical numbers describe the character's feelings. A very strange film mixing graphic sex, song and dance production numbers and almost no story development; give the filmmakers credit for trying something different, but it never jells and
is dull most of the time. There are a few standout scenes (the opening watermelon sex scene), but like every shot in the movie they go on for far too long and end up diminishing their own impact.
May 27, 2010
Greg S
Super Reviewer
Wow this one is hard to rate.. It's one of the strangest movies I've seen in a long long time! But it's definitely worth watching. Nice camera work, and I liked the long and silent scenes. The sex sort of gets annoying after a while. What can I tell you about the silly songs? I guess it works, they stay in your head
(I'm not sure if you're going to be too thrilled about that), so in a sense you're the one who's providing the soundtrack for the movie :)I can't wait to see it again!
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