"I Don't Want To Sleep Alone" was the second film by Tsai Ming-Liang, and the first one I saw complete. (I walked out on "Visage.") Like "Visage," this is more about the idea of cinema than a movie with a dramatic arc. The characters aren't named, they barely speak, and their motivations are never explained, only inferred. Takes only seem endless because often there's no action. There's so little dialogue that he must have been paying the scriptwriter by the word.
Water plays an important part, as it does in "Visage" and "The Wayward Cloud," because why not? Water is important, even archetypal. That must be why one character, searching for another, takes a staircase to a flooded level in a deserted parking garage. The actor seemed genuinely surprised when she stepped into the water. That got a laugh, which may not have been the intention.
Tsai likes to include lip-synched production numbers to Chinese pop songs. In "I Don't Want To Sleep Alone" that is how the movie ends, though it isn't much of production. In place of a costumed chorus and dance moves that he featured in "The Wayward Cloud," it's just a mattress floating in the water while the music plays. To be accurate, the movie doesn't end; it just stops.
If this is the sort of movie you like, then you'll definitely like "I Don't Want To Sleep Alone." Otherwise, stay far, far away from this and Tsai Ming-Liang's other films.
Water plays an important part, as it does in "Visage" and "The Wayward Cloud," because why not? Water is important, even archetypal. That must be why one character, searching for another, takes a staircase to a flooded level in a deserted parking garage. The actor seemed genuinely surprised when she stepped into the water. That got a laugh, which may not have been the intention.
Tsai likes to include lip-synched production numbers to Chinese pop songs. In "I Don't Want To Sleep Alone" that is how the movie ends, though it isn't much of production. In place of a costumed chorus and dance moves that he featured in "The Wayward Cloud," it's just a mattress floating in the water while the music plays. To be accurate, the movie doesn't end; it just stops.
If this is the sort of movie you like, then you'll definitely like "I Don't Want To Sleep Alone." Otherwise, stay far, far away from this and Tsai Ming-Liang's other films.