The Wayward Cloud
aka Tian bian yi duo yun First screened in December 2025
Director: Tsai Ming-liang. Cast: Chen Shiang-chyi, Lee Kang-sheng, Lu Yi-ching, Sumomo Yozakura, Yang Kuei-mei, Hsiao Huan-wen, Lin Hui-xun, Jao Kuo-xuan. Screenplay: Tsai Ming-liang. In Brief:
Tsai reframes his interest in alienation, deepens exploration of artifice, and stakes out posiition on misogyny.
VOR:④
Might've been a hornier retread of The Hole but reveals more ambition than that. Rare critique of porn that follows an earnest path all its own.
Well, that's not exactly the movie I'd been imagining it was for the past 20 years. In my defense, though, it's not a movie that anyone imagined, ever, without actually making or seeing it. Tsai of course sustains a lot of his signature aesthetic, signature cast, signature tempo, signature location, signature thresholds between present reality and near-future dystopia and between thoroughly unembossed realism and wild flights of surrealist fantasy. None of that's a surprise in itself, but The Wayward Cloud takes his work in directions unpredicted by prior or subsequent films, and it poses political questions unlike what he's broached elsewhere. A bit of a lark, a bit of a chore, a bit of naughtiness, a bit of mystery, and then a concluding wallop that ties everything mercilessly together. Grade:B+
(I originally wrote this review on Letterboxd, where you can comment if you like.)
Awards:
Berlin Film Festival: Outstanding Artistic Achievement (Tsai); Alfred Bauer Prize; FIPRESCI Prize
