I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2007)

This Chinese Taiwanese film is depicting the life of young people in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. It is showing one of these tigers of Asia in their development at a crucial moment when things seem to be halted and yet they go on maybe just at a slower pace. But people remain what they are, people with human values. They will help a man who had fainted on the sidewalk. They will wash him, feed him, take care of him just as if he was one of the family, though he is unknown. They will take care of a man who is absolutely reduced to a vegetable state, unresponsive, and yet there, alive even if totally blank. And then the impulses of the women or of the men are the same as everywhere in the world, and yet what these young people really want is not that instantaneous and future-less of not futile moment of bliss. They want to be close to someone else, feeling his or her heart and blood pressure and emotions and sentiments and heat, share that feeling and just sleep into it, dream into it. Let's go beyond this world of imperfection and never satisfied failure or success, it does not matter. Let's get into the deep mellowness of empathy, sympathy, compassion, sharing and gathering our minds and all our senses into some kind of communion that is one step closer to the path to enlightenment. That's what at least the Buddha in the café tells me, though we see him from the back and Buddhism is only second to Islam in Malaysia, but the two religions have that thing in common that the mind and the heart are only one same thing and they are the only guides that can take us to a higher more humane level of humanity. And that is all contained in that big mattress they find on the sidewalk and they transport together from one place to another with only one intention, to share it, to use it together. A mattress as a symbol of the Buddhist Dukkha, that never ending cycle from birth to rebirth and every time some people abandon the mattress, it dies, but then some other people come and give it a new life through a rebirth of love.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

This may be Tsai's first film set and made in his homeland of Malaysia, but he doesn't stray at all from Tsaiville. Which isn't much of a problem, really, if you're a fan of the director. Sure, we could complain that he's been hitting the same notes for eight features now, but there are artists in every medium that are like this. Either we get sick of it, or we like it and we stick with it. I'm sticking with Tsai. His moods and rhythms haunt my mind. He captures images like no other director, and he's definitely one auteur whose work you could identify from just one shot (granted, you have about ten times as many frames in that one shot as you do in your average auteur's work!). I Don't Want to Sleep Alone is probably my least favorite of all of his films (all of which I've seen except his previous, The Wayward Cloud – I've seen the first five minutes and am aching to finish it). This is mostly because I wasn't too sure what was going on through much of it. The plot seems to concern a young Chinese man (played by Tsai's boytoy/regular Lee Kang-sheng) who gets beaten senseless in Kuala Lumpur. A construction worker saves him and nurses him back to health, mostly with lustful intentions. But when the Chinese man is up and about, he goes off and sleeps with some women, which understandably pisses off his savior. Then there was a bunch of stuff I didn't quite understand, notably a guy in a coma (also played by Lee Kang-sheng). A lot of my favorite shots involved that guy, but I'm not 100% sure what was going on in that plot line. The images here are top notch, and though there is little dialogue, Tsai's use of sound – and music – is wonderful. Much as Tsai uses Taipei, Kuala Lumpur is an area of urban alienation. Late in the film smoke drifts over from a nearby Sumatran forest fire, covering the city with a thick haze. Many of the scenes are set in a crumbling building (not quite sure what this was all about, really), which reminds me of the post-apocalyptic landscape in my favorite Tsai film, The Hole. I actually think I might have enjoyed this more had I watched it when I was less tired. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I want to give it another chance with the awful DVD, courtesy of Strand Releasing. It's cropped, for one thing. The image also looks a lot less crisp than any of Tsai's other films, though that may have been his stylistic choice this time around.

What would you do l if you had to share an old flea-ridden mattress with a stranger in a scorching hot and humid Kuala Lumpur? How would you feel if you think you are sleeping with the person whom you feel attached to but realise that your rival in love is also in the bed? It's true that "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone", Tsai Ming-liang's 9th film and the first set in his hometown in Malaysia, is not a pleasant film to digest on a tranquil weekend. Yet I'm sure the gloomy reality won't prevent Tsai's fans or sensitive filmgoers from finding some hopeful and frivolous moments in the film. Superficially this slow-paced film explores the lives of lower-middle class workers and examines the reality of Kuala Lumpur as a multilingual and multiracial city. The best part of the film does not rest in the vivid representation of the workers and the city, but Tsai's passionate concern for human beings, especially their extremely simple wish to be loved and their fear of loneliness. Homeless Xiaokang (Lee Kang-sheng, the director's alter-ego) was robbed and beaten by swindlers in a rundown area of Kuala Lumpur, and brought home by Rawang, a Malay construction worker who is superbly played by Norman Atun. The kind Rawang lets Xiaokang sleep on an old mattress that he picks up from the street. Parallel to Rawang's nursing Xiaolang is the teahouse waitress Qi (Chen Xiangqi)'s taking care of the bed-ridden paralysed son of the teahouse owner (Pearly Chua). Unlike Rawang who finds stability and happiness in taking care of Xiaokang, Qi is desperate to seek for a new life, more than ever after her encounter with Xiaokang who awakens long repressed desires in her. The repressed middle-aged female teahouse owner is also attracted to the young body of Xiaokang, but astonishingly realises that Xiaokang's appearance bears resemblance to her son. Unexpected heavy smog from Indonesia begins to attack the city. In the seriously-polluted city, it is the common "syndrome" combination of loneliness, desire and longing for love and being loved that bring all the characters together. The chosen music is a significant supplement to the limited dialogue. The multi-racial background of immigrants in Kuala Lumpur is introduced through an aural mosaic of Malay folksongs, Chinese songs, Cantonese operas, and Bollywood music. You can easily identity the workers' ethnic background from what they listen, though of course also from the way they eat and dress. Even the rhythm of daily life in Kuala Lumpur is revealed through the sound. The noise from water-inserting in the building site where Rawang works is placed against the vague sound of Alazan from a Mosque. The local-styled coffee shop (kopitiam) is boisterous with mahjong playing sound, Malay news reporting, multilingual chatting sounds from the customers, and even the sound of plastic bags when the waitress Qi wraps up takeaway food for the customers. The lively scene on the ground floor is in drastic contrast to the silence of the first floor where the shop owner's comatose son (also played by Li Kang-sheng) lies motionlessly. The Cantonese love-story opera and the old Chinese love song ingeniously reflect the forlorn characters' emerging desires. Caught either in a poor or repressed situation, the characters all wriggle with intense desire, and endeavour to build connections with people. Despite all the alienations (Rawang is isolated from his peer workers and sticks to Xiaokang) and frustrations (Qi and Xiaokang's clumsy attempt to make love in masks), there is always a solution. After all, happiness can be enormously simple, such as merely owning a mattress and nursing a stranger until he recovers. Bearing Tsai's familiar stylistic conceits such as long takes and a static camera, usual concerns on the alienation and yearning of human beings and must-have scenes such as running water and sex, "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" however treats isolation as part of human nature, instead of a syndrome caused by the ultra-modernised environment as in Tsai's earlier films. Once again, Tsai proved he is one of those love-him-or-hate-him auteurs as applauses and criticisms were both heard when I walked out of the cinema. If I were to choose between the two poles, I would go for the former simply because of Tsai's minimalist techniques and meditative sensitivity. Despite not as amusing as "Hole", or as tense as "Wayward Cloud", "A Don't Want to Sleep Alone" is easily Tsai's most warmhearted film to date.

I've attended the Singapore gala premier of Tsai Ming Liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone 3 hours ago, and here's the verdict: The movie calms you down, and let it search for you want. That's what the supporting actress Pearlly Chua said to the audience before the movie begins. And indeed, it calms you down.Tsai's 1st attemp in his country of origin Malaysia has proved to be a success, despite being banned by the government back in Malaysia for portraying the other side of Malaysia, where it so happens that 2007 is a significant year for Malaysia, as it is a year where Malaysia is drawing people around the world to visit Malaysia for its beauty and unique blend of culture. However, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone tells the other side of Malaysia, in terms of the lifestyle of Malaysian Chinese and Bangladeshi workers and the surroundings, makes the government feel that the film is damaging the image of the country.And why is that so? In the film, were were introduced to a homeless man and a paralyzed man (both played by Lee Kang Sheng, Tsai's muse cum favorite actor), a foreign worker (Norman Atun), a waitress in a neighborhood cafe (Chen Hsiang Chyi) and her lady boss (Pearlly Chua), who was the mother of the paralyzed man. The homeless man was robbed by a group of thugs and was saved by a group of foreign workers. A worker showers care and concern for the homeless man and gave him food and lodge, and a share of the old mattress found at a garbage dump. On the other side, waitress works in a neighborhood cafe and takes care of the paralyzed man. The homeless man met the waitress and share the feelings for each other by following each other around in the neighborhood.Compared to his previous The Wayward Cloud, a musical that discuss sex, desire and crave for one another in a unusual manner (think of using watermelons to express love), Tsai is going back to his usual style of presentation in I Don't Want. Do not expect any dialogues among the cast, let alone the expression of love for each other using songs and dance. What you get is 115 minutess of peace, without any music to go along with. What you see and hear are sounds from the surroundings in our daily life. Think scrubbing of dirty clothes, the honks in a crowded traffic, songs from radio stations and Indian musicals from a home video shop.The film greatly explores the cravings and desires every human being wants. The worker isolates himself from his peers and stick with the homeless man, the homeless man follows the waitress and eventually, the lady boss had sex with the homeless man at the backyard. Tsai uses the emotional world of ordinary human beings to explore the desires and cravings thru something that one tend to missed out from the daily life.For moviegoers who finds 3 minutes of motionless scenes a drag, I Don't Want is definitely not a film for you. At the start of the movie, we see a paralyzed man lying motionlessly on a bed for about 2 minutes. And be prepared that for the next few scenes, it would be focused for an average of 2 minutes per scene.And so I Don't Want works out under this formula: Malaysian film + Tsai Ming Liang = I Don't Want To Sleep Alone.Overall, it is peaceful and quiet, without much dialogues to go along with. If you are getting tired of normal noisy flicks, let I Don't Want to Sleep Alone to cleanse your preference of movies.Go see it. You will feel calm after the show. Malaysian film + Tsai Ming Liang = I Don't Want To Sleep Alone.