Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/09/22

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, October 9, 2022

Vive l’Amour (Tsai Ming-liang, 1994)

Vive l’Amour (Tsai Ming-liang, 1994)

Cast: Chen Chao-jung, Lee Kang-sheng, Yang Kue-Mei. Screenplay: Tsai Ming-liang, Tsai Yi-chun, Yang Pi-ying. Cinematography: Liao Pen-Jung, Lin Ming-Kuo. Production design: Lee Pao-Lin. Film editing: Sung Shia-cheng.

Vive l’Amour, the ironic title of Tsai Ming-liang’s film, brings to mind another French phrase: comédie larmoyante. And not just because it ends with a very long close-up of the character May Lin (Yang Kue-Mei) sobbing bitterly, but because the film is its own kind of tearful comedy, one with roots in the genre of farce, in which characters occupy a common space but somehow avoid making connection with one another. It’s a story about existential loneliness. Ah-jung (Chen Chao-jung) is making his rounds in the gloomy job of funerary urn salesman when he finds a key left in the lock of a vacant luxury apartment. He sneaks in at night planning to commit suicide, but only makes a half-hearted attempt at cutting his wrist with a Swiss army knife and bandages himself up. Then he realizes that he’s not alone in the large apartment when he hears a couple having sex in another room. They are May Lin, the real estate agent supposed to be showing the apartment to clients, and Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), who have picked each other up in a restaurant. Hsiao-kang, who illegally sells women’s dresses on the street, steals her key to the apartment and moves in. Eventually, Ah-jung and Hsiao-kang encounter each other and become friends. But their friendship is tested when May Lin and Hsiao-kang return to the apartment, and Ah-jung, hearing them enter, hides under the bed. As the couple have sex, Ah-jung masturbates below them. After May Lin leaves, Ah-jung gets in bed with the sleeping Hsiao-kang and stares at him longingly, then kisses him. May LIn, having discovered that her car won’t start, sets out to walk home but winds up weeping on a park bench. The story of the three is intercut with glimpses of their lonely lives: May Lin waiting patiently for clients that don’t show, Ah-jung distributing leaflets advertising his urns, Hsiao-kang trying on one of the dresses he peddles. There’s no music score and very little expository dialogue, but the sound track is alive, from the noise of love-making Ah-jung hears from another room to the pock-pock-pock of May Lin’s heels as she sets out on her long walk homeward. We don’t know why May Lin weeps, or what drives Ah-jung to consider suicide, but by showing the texture of their isolated lives, Tsai makes us intuit the causes.