the wayward cloud

This is a 2005 film by Tsai Ming-Liang (and in a way uses two characters from his 2001 film What Time Is It There?). It's a musical, or has musical numbers. And the music is great: it recalls 50s, 40s American music with singing in Mandarin.


Basically the setting of this film is a drought-stricken Taiwan where water is really hard to come by. Mix in a lot of watermelons. And a porn star and the filming of his scenes. Yeah, you get it: this is NOT a musical for the entire family -- in fact it's probably a fit for only the smallest minority -- though the film apparently made a lot of bread. If the image above doesn't prove that then check out the trailer (you have to be over 18 to watch it...the subtitles in the trailer are in French). You can hear (and see) in the trailer that the musical numbers really do constitute a "celebration of life": colorful, imaginative, funny, lascivious, weird...that's life, right?

The film's title in Chinese is 天邊一朵雲.