Where to begin with Tsai Ming-liang

With the exception of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Malaysian-Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang is likely the most famous active filmmaker within the loose style known as slow cinema. Renowned for his static long takes, minimal dialogue, and the obscure and unpredictable nature of his pacing and narratives, Tsai operates at an extreme end of the general cinephilic consciousness. He has been a beloved figure for decades without once sacrificing the rigour of his filmmaking, constantly pushing the boundaries of cinema’s capacity for duration and stasis.

But Tsai’s oeuvre is not merely a series of uninflected experiments with form. Among many other things, it is an expression of love for his muse: actor Lee Kang-sheng, who has appeared in every one of his theatrical feature films. A gay filmmaker with a straight actor as the subject of his unrequited desires, Tsai has observed Lee age on screen for more than 30 years, moving into weathered middle-age while maintaining a perpetually taciturn, world-weary expression and physicality.

This persistence of vision is matched by Tsai’s eye for the contemporary Taipei that became his home, full of decaying apartments and littered streets which reflect the essential loneliness of Lee and some of his other key actors, including Yang Kuei-mei, Chen Shiang-chyi, Miao Tien and Lu Yi-ching. As their typically thwarted longings play out amid a city which is at once modern and bygone, Tsai’s films accumulate a tremendous sense of mood and texture, as imposing as they are inviting.

From 1992 to 2013, each of Tsai’s features registered as a conscious step in his development, introducing new thematic concerns and formal innovations with a consistency perhaps only matched by Robert Bresson. So, it makes sense to start at the beginning, with Tsai’s directorial debut Rebels of the Neon God (1992), his first theatrical feature after an extended stint in television filmmaking.

Already, many of the pieces are in place: the interwoven structure with central characters – here, Lee and early regular Chen Chao-jung, who forms a relationship with a young woman – who only glancingly interact, heavy rain, and the family of Lee, Miao and Lu, which runs through a great number of Tsai’s films.

Granted, there are multiple aspects that feel distinct from even his following few films: there is a synth bass-heavy original score, a greater focus on petty crime – and a corresponding, relatively straightforward narrative – courtesy of Chen’s character, and an incorporation of wider society reminiscent of Edward Yang’s work. But the means by which Rebels of the Neon God suddenly distills itself into the events of a few nights, mixing its protagonists’ frustrations into a potent blend, is pure Tsai.

Continuing the incremental developments in Tsai’s work, his second feature, Vive l’amour (1994), refines its predecessor’s latent love triangle into an exploration of sexuality within a vacant apartment. Featuring the first overt demonstration of Tsai’s career-long depiction of tortured queerness, it culminates in an unforgettable expression of anguished catharsis.

As steady as Tsai’s films are, they frequently feature wild swings in tone from scene to scene, and there are no better examples than his two musicals, which break at periodic intervals from his trademark minimalism into choreographed sequences featuring lip-synched performances of classic Mandarin songs. The Hole (1998) is a quasi-apocalyptic romance, featuring Lee and Yang as apartment neighbors connected when a plumber knocks a hole into his floor/her ceiling during a mysterious waterborne pandemic. Exclusively consisting of Grace Chang songs, its musical numbers are some of the most jubilant in cinema. 

By contrast, The Wayward Cloud (2005) features Lee as a porn actor reconnecting with Chen’s character from the devastating The River (1997) and What Time Is It There? (2001) – which itself literalises the kinship between Tsai and Lee’s collaboration and the François Truffaut/Jean-Pierre Léaud partnership – during a water shortage. Despite some similarly freewheeling musical numbers, it registers as an uncommonly harsh film even by Tsai’s often unsparing standards.

Tsai’s greatest film is Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003), which breaks from his usual interests to depict the cinema space as a vanishing nexus for community and desire, featuring a cruising Japanese tourist and Chen as a limping ticket-taker pining for Lee’s projectionist. Taking place on a grand theatre’s final night of operation during and after a screening of King Hu’s legendary action film Dragon Inn (1967), it is one of the few examples where a director consciously set out to make a masterpiece and succeeded; Tsai’s placement of it on his own Sight and Sound top 10 list speaks for itself.

Finally, there are two essential projects that point to the wordless documentary aspects of his gorgeous Days (2020). Stray Dogs (2013) is one of his most significant films, starring Lee as an unhoused single father and concluding with two of the greatest extended static shots in all of cinema. The experimental Walker series has formed the bulk of his output in the past decade, however, all starring Lee as a bald, red-robed monk moving extremely slowly through a variety of global locales. The first short, Walker (2012), and featurette Journey to the West (2014, featuring Denis Lavant) are both essential, but No No Sleep (2015) is an under-heralded triumph, with indelible shots from a moving metro train and of public bathing which embody solitude with startling vividness.

One of the great hidden gems in Tsai’s filmography is his documentary Afternoon (2015), which consists of nothing more (or less) than a 137-minute conversation between Tsai and Lee in the home they share in the mountains of Taiwan, carried out in a single camera angle and four shots, with brief black screens only used to indicate when the crew had to swap out the camera’s SD cards. It may be impenetrable or dull to many, but for those familiar with the depth of the relationship between Tsai and Lee on and off camera, it is a work of great beauty, showing both the director’s surprising gregariousness and the actor’s typical reserve, while shedding light on innumerable personal topics. Even more than most of Tsai’s works, it demands patience and familiarity, amply rewarding those who engage with it on its own terms.

Tsai’s new film Abiding Nowhere screens at the 68th BFI London Film Festival.

A Beginner’s Guide to… Tsai Ming-liang is a free talk at the festival.

Days/Afternoon: Two Films by Tsai Ming-liang will be released on Blu-ray by Second Run on 21 October.