Official Selection - In Competition - Venice Film Festival 2006
"modern cinema's reigning genius"
NEW YORK TIMES
FILM OF THE WEEK
(5 STARS)
TIME OUT
"superbly haunting"
SIGHT & SOUND
Shooting for the first time in Malaysia after seven features set primarily in Taipei, director Tsai Ming-Liang returns to his birthplace with a film unlike any of his prior works. Different in texture, mood and feel, and featuring a cast of multi-cultural and multi-lingual characters, the vivid, crowded, neon-lit streets of Kuala Lumpur come alive as only master director Tsai Ming-Liang can capture...
After being robbed and attacked one night in Kuala Lumpur, Hsiao-kang, a homeless Chinese man, is rescued and taken in by some Bangladeshi workers. One of them, Rawang, lets him sleep beside him on an old mattress that he had found on the street. Later, when Chyi, a waitress at a coffee-shop, meets Hsiao-kang, she is filled with lustful desire. As Hsiao-kang slowly recovers, he finds himself caught between Rawang and Chyi – as well as Chyi’s female boss. Meanwhile, a heavy haze descends on the city that is so humid that it stinks of the perspiration of its multi-ethnic people. These men and women and the old mattress lose their way in the haze but find one another…
I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone was commissioned for the Mozart-anniversary ‘New Crowned Hope’ project, Vienna 2006.
Bonus features include an exclusive in-depth interview with Tsai Ming-Liang by the writer and critic Tony Rayns.
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