Monday September 4, 2006
Local flavour
By MICHAEL CHEANG
The last time acclaimed Kuching-born filmmaker Tsai Ming Liang was in Malaysia, he was ironically representing Taiwan at the 50th Asia Pacific Film Festival. This happened last year.
Despite being one of the most respected contemporary filmmakers in the world with award-winning films like The Wayward Cloud, The River, The Hole, Rebels of the Neon Gods and What Time Is it There?, the Taiwan-based Tsai never made a movie about Malaysia.
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I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Taiwan-based filmmaker Tsai Ming Liang’s first Malaysian film, is in the running for the prestigious Golden Lion Award. |
“In 1999, I came back to KL to stay for a year, and that was when I thought that maybe I should come back to make a movie here,” he said at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur last week.
Seven years later, Tsai finally has a Malaysian film, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, to call his own.
Set in a (literally) hazy Kuala Lumpur, the movie stars Taiwanese actor Lee Kang Sheng as a homeless man in the capital city who is attacked and robbed, and later taken in by a Bangladeshi worker named Rawang (Norman Atun) who nurses him back to health.
The homeless man later meets Chyi (Chen Shiang-Chyi), a waitress in a coffee shop, and the three are caught in a triangle of love and lust.
The movie will be screened at the Venice International Film Festival (Aug 30-Sept 9) in Italy as a contender for the prestigious Golden Lion Award (the equivalent of a best picture award at the festival).
Besides Tsai, who won the Golden Lion in 1994 for Vive L’Amour, there are two other Malaysian films competing at the festival. They are Ho Yuhang’s Rain Dogs, which will be competing in the Orrizonti (Horizons) section, and Adults Only by Yeo Joon Han, which will be competing in the Corto Cortissimo (short film) category.
Tsai said that I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone is his most accomplished film and also the most difficult to shoot.
“Malaysia may be where I was born, but I have not been back for over 20 years. So when I came back (to film) I was like a foreigner – I had to get used to a culture and environment that I was not familiar with,” he said.
Despite the film being mostly in Mandarin, Tsai stressed that I Don't Want to Sleep Alone is actually an international film.
“It's not just a Chinese film, but also involves all the other races, and foreigners in Malaysia as well. You can also say it’s a Taiwanese and Malaysian joint production, since I brought some of my crew over from Taiwan, and hired Malaysians as well.”
Nevertheless, he stressed that special effort was made to add a certain Malaysian flavour to the movie. Besides being filmed here, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone also stars Malaysian actors such as Pearlly Chua (best-known for her stage performance in Emily of Emerald Hill) and newcomer Norman Atun (he was selling kuih by the roadside when Tsai spotted him).
He also said that this would definitely not be the last time he will be filming in Malaysia.
“After I finished this movie, I still felt there are so many things in Malaysia that I have not yet filmed,” he said, adding that he might be returning to make a short film after the festival in Venice.
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