Critic Reviews
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Wally Hammond, Time Out
The film's meandering, surrealist-kissed, early scenes dance nicely in time with his urban protagonist's disconnected, existential malaise.
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A.O. Scott, New York Times
The Wayward Cloud offers one plausible moral: If life hands you watermelons, make love to them.
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V.A. Musetto, New York Post
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.
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Nathan Lee, Village Voice
Tsai's emptied-out aesthetic has never felt so empty, his mannerisms so pointlessly mannered.
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Geoff Andrew, Time Out
A witty, insightful and typically idiosyncratic continuation of Tsai's earlier features.
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Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Juicy surrealist film.
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Chris Cabin, Filmcritic.com
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.
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Kam Williams, Sly Fox
Taiwanese titillation flick featurings watermelon as a metaphor.
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Kam Williams, NewsBlaze
A curiously-compelling and impossible to pigeonhole romantic romp which blurs the line between pornography and legit cinema in magnificent fashion.
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Anthony Quinn, Independent
Features the most explicit use of a watermelon ever filmed.
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Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph
So extravagantly, hilariously rude as to be almost indescribable.
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Derek Malcolm, This is London
It may be slow as a snail, but it leaves a trail.
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Nigel Andrews, Financial Times
Characters make love, make meals, make conversation - though not much - and in moments of transcendence remake the world according to their fantasies and longings.
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Tom Dawson, BBC
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.
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David Parkinson, Empire Magazine
Director Tsai Ming-liang's film harks back to more innocent times when screen romance didn't involve a money shot.
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Philip Kemp, Total Film
A highly idiosyncratic semi-musical.
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Jack Dundee, Little White Lies
More high-end arthouse fare from an ever-burgeoning Chinese-language film scene.
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Anton Bitel, Film4
Tsai's bittersweet musical comedy of frustration, fruit and fellatio may be dry, but it drips with melon-choly.
Read all 18 critic reviews
Featured Audience Ratings
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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… More
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.
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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… More
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!
<a href="http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j291/machinder/?action=view¤t=wayward_cloud_01.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j291/machinder/wayward_cloud_01.jpg" border="0" alt="Tsai Ming Liang,Asian,Wayward Cloud"></a>
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[font=Century Gothic]"The Wayward Cloud" is a sequel to "What Time Is It There?", set during a severe drought in Taiwan. The movie opens in corridors where a nurse and Shang-chyi(Shiang-chyi Chen) are going in different directions. In the next scene, the nurse is… More
[font=Century Gothic]"The Wayward Cloud" is a sequel to "What Time Is It There?", set during a severe drought in Taiwan. The movie opens in corridors where a nurse and Shang-chyi(Shiang-chyi Chen) are going in different directions. In the next scene, the nurse is lying on a bed with a watermelon between her legs. Enter Hsiao-Kang(Kang-sheng Lee) who is apparently now making a living starring in porn films, since he does make furious love with said watermelon. Shang-chyi has not been back from Paris for long because she still has not opened her suitcase. Having her keys accidentally paved over on the street does not help matters. On one trip to collect water, Shang-chyi runs across Hsiao-Kang who is sleeping in the park.[/font]
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]The director of "Wayward Cloud", Tsai Ming-liang, is one of the only directors I trust to making movies with little plot because of his great skill in setting the mood in the human comedies he makes. Also indicative of his films, is little dialogue, great sight gags and long static shots with more than one thing happening at the same time.(Well, the musical numbers are new.) The film says that even though there are certain basic elements we need in order to survive, quite a bit more is required in order to truly live. (But I still have no idea of what to make of the last sequence...) [/font]
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