I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone (hēi yǎn quān)
Director Tsai Ming Liang returns to his native Malaysia to present this melancholy study of human alienation. I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone was among several films commissioned by Peter Sellars’ New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna in 2006, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth.
If you are already a Tsai fan and enjoy his unique cinematic methods - long, steady shots of urban decay; characters who wander round aimlessly, expressing longing through gesture, glance and touch rather than coherent dialogue; and bald landscapes as a metaphor for human loneliness - then I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone may be right up your street. If, on the other hand, conventional drama with dependable characters and an obvious structure is more your cup of tea, you could be in for the longest two hours of your life.
The film presents us with two interlinked stories. In the first, a homeless man called Hsiao Kang (Lee Kang-Sheng) is robbed, beaten and left for dead. He is found by a Rawang (Norman Atun), an immigrant construction worker who washes, feeds and cares for him until he is strong enough to fend for himself. In the second story, a comatose man (also played by Lee) is nursed by the Chyi (Chen Shiang-Chyi) a waitress in a run-down coffee shop who lives with her sexually repressed female boss (Pearlly Chua). When the recovering Hsiao Kang wanders into the coffee shop one day, Chyi is consumed with lust for him, and an awkward triangle is formed as a noxious smog descends upon the city.
The film is not so much a story as a series of interlocking events. The first scene, which lasts a good five minutes, depicts a man lying on a bed with a tube feeding into his nose, and sets the tone for the rest of the film. Nothing changes save the operatic strains blaring out from the small radio. This is not a film for the restless. Dialogue is minimal and we are never privy to people’s thoughts - at least not directly. But suggestions are made through song - the Bollywood celebration of the lovers’ reunion, the simplicity of nursery rhyme to underline basic human needs like food and shelter. Maybe. The action is fragmented, cutting between Hsiao who spends much of his time fishing in a pool of stagnant water, and the man in a coma, who is washed and sometimes masturbated by his carer.
I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone is beautifully photographed. Long, sustained shots find beauty in what would usually be regarded as the ugliest of urban landscapes, and the skeletal apartment block is a wonderful metaphor for the fragmented nature of its inhabitants’ lives. Everything captures the listlessness of an impoverished city that never sleeps, the humdrum lives of its citizens rolling on aimlessly. A dusty fan whirs away while Chyi gives her patient the ritual massage; the gaudy neon lights never stop glowing into the night; the bored faces of the cafe’s patrons chomp away at their curries in silence.
The refusal to hang a film on traditional certainties, such as solid characters and meaningful dialogue certainly makes us think. Beauty and loneliness are laid bare - but to what end? It is not enough for a film to be simply beautiful. It must also be entertaining at some level. We can learn little from characters with no foundation, who keep speech to a minimum and seem to do everything on impulse, or from staring at a pool of water or a staircase. Tsai offers us nothing to cling on to but emptiness. Perhaps this is his aim, but whilst his fans will cherish this melancholy presentation of it, Tsai novices may feel they have wasted their time on ethereal balderdash.
