Saturday, June 12, 2010

The Wayward Cloud....warning: this post is not suitable for under 18


So i've been watching a lot of netflix instant watch crap.  I like the foreign steamy romance category.  Why?  Cuz i'm a perv. deal with it.  Last night, i saw The Wayward Cloud (2005) which is a Taiwanese indieflick directed by Tsai Ming-Liang and it was Taiwan's official entry for the 78th Academy Awards in the foreign-language category.  There is a LOT of male and female nudity.  But!  No full frontal.  Cuz female bush is ok and arrrrtsy rated R, but male penis is crass and scary and rated NC-17! 

Anyhoos, this movie is basically about a young man who is a porno actor.  There is a lot of footage of him "at work" with a bunch of crazy Taiwanese porn starlets, one of whom loses a fake eyelash during the filming of a shower scene and freaks out, stopping production so she can find her eyelash.  It hit close to home, folks.  But for the main character dude.... he only has eyes for this quiet, weird girl who is super cute but never speaks--she barely has 5 lines in the whole movie.  She lives in the same building as him.  He wants to keep his day job a secret from her.  She has an affinity for lying flat on the floor spread eagle while watching tv and drinking watermelon juice and licking watermelons like they're someone's balls.  She reciprocates the guy's feelings.  They hang out.  There's a memorable scene where they're eating crab soup together.  It's very carnal and lovely, the shadows of the two at the dinner table biting and crunching and giggling as they eat the crab.  It's one of those films that makes me feel like i'm tripping or on drugs.  In one scene, he is swimming in a water reservoir and suddenly he turns into a Britney Spearsian besequined dragon with spikes and starts singing.  That's when i realized, oh this is a musical, too.  a pervy musical in the vein of John Cameron Mitchell films like Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  I was at once confused and delighted.     

This movie makes me see watermelons (oh, and love) in a totally new way.  There is also a scene when some japanese porn star masturbates with an empty dasani water bottle and loses the cap in her cavernous punani.  But it's not all gratuitous sex and no story; for example, the scene where they finally yield to their mutual desires is strangely romantic--even tho it happens in a porno video store... it is utterly climactic--emotionally, not physically, as they don't actually do the deed.  Which brings me to the theme of this little arthouse flick.  Duh, sex and love are not always attached or symbiotic.  He bones mad hoes yet is completely lost in the weird quiet girl--who he never actually has sex with in the entire film.  In the final scene, she catches him filming a scene with a porno girl and she watches in total horror.  He is pounding this girl and locking eyes with the other, his true love.  Their emotional/spiritual connection takes both of them to a different place entirely, although physically they're completely apart in more ways than just distance...I mean, he's literally inside another girl.  But when he is about to orgasm, he pulls out of the girl and blows his load onto the one he loves, all over her face.  Shocking?  Yes.  But it's a statement on sensuality and eroticism... even love.  Love is regarded as the deepest human connection but it isn't necessarily about the act of sex.  It's more about the psychological, the non physical.  It's about yearning and ardor and ravenousness and fascination.  It's about a disgusting display of quiet devotion--something pure shown in a repulsive way as the final scene of the film illustrates.  For many years, filmmakers have explored how sex is essentially a violent thing.  Here, the director Tsai uses sex as merely a backdrop (a refreshing approach) to study love--how it can be dirty and psychotic and wild and impure--but how that is the beauty of it.

Peace and Love,
Lizbotwin's Theory of Zexual Revolution

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