Tsai Ming-Liang and a Cinema of Slowness

Acknowledgments

xi acknowledgments Some film-viewing experiences are more momentous than others. I remember watching Tsai Ming-liang’s debut film, Rebels of the Neon God, when it was released in 1992 and recognizing instantly a brave new voice in Taiwan cinema. It was already assured and measured, yet full of promise of greater things. I felt a buzz, a visceral reaction like involuntary goose pimples that unmistakably signaled an affectual connection beyond mere connoisseurship. That promise was fulfilled two years later in Tsai’s next film, Vive l’amour. The clinical dissection of cinematic space and urban alienation in the film was accompanied by bold choices such as the denial of a music score; yet the film pushes the audience with the unrelenting crying sound of the female protagonist at the end of the film that lasted six minutes. Just as Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A Time to Live, a Time to Die (1986) had previously announced, for me, the arrival of a cinematic master, watching Vive l’amour was one of those watershed moments when one realized that one’s relationship to cinema had changed forever. Thus began what was to become a half-a-life-long obsession with the films of Tsai Ming-liang. When I started my MPhil degree at Cambridge in 1997, I was still recovering from the shock of Tsai’s third film, The River, but decided nonetheless to write my thesis on what has now become known as the “Hsiao-kang trilogy.” Subsequently embarking on a PhD, I realized that writing a book on Tsai was premature. Parts of the MPhil thesis went into a chapter of the PhD dissertation, which later became the book Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas. But all that time and since then, I have perhaps been known among friends, colleagues, and xii acknowledgments students as “the Tsai Ming-liang guy,” waiting for the right moment to write the book. I therefore feel, in equal measure, a sense of fulfillment and a sense of relief now that this book has finally come to fruition, though I suspect my obsession has yet to be completely exorcized, as images from Tsai’s films continue to haunt me. The first person to thank, then, is Tsai Ming-liang, whose films inspired this book and much more. The current shape of the book took its embryonic form when I moved, in 2006, from Leeds to Exeter, where I began to offer, as an MA option module, “Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness,” a platform on which I have built my reading and reflection on the subject. I am indebted to Susan Hayward for making this possible and for the way in which she made me feel welcomed, to the extent that she even put up the wallpaper in the living room of my flat. I am also grateful to the MA students who were guinea pigs as I tested out my ideas in class. Over the years, colleagues at Exeter have provided constant intellectual stimulation, which makes academic life pleasurable. For this I thank Fiona Handyside, Helen Hanson, Will Higbee, Danielle Hipkins, Joe Kember, James Lyons, Steve Neale, Dan North, John Sealey, and Phil Wickham. Regenia Gagnier, Ricarda Schmidt, and Jane Spencer have been supportive in their role as director of research; as research officers , Nela Kapelan and Michael Wykes offered sound advice on grant applications relating to this project. A British Academy Small Research Grant facilitated archival trips to Taiwan and research assistance in 2008–2009. Matthew Flanagan did the hard work of computing statistical figures for analysis, and I have benefited immensely from his vast knowledge of a cinema of slowness. Ong Chao Hong transcribed and translated an interview I conducted with Tsai. A study leave granted by the University of Exeter in January–July 2010 gave me the time to write the main chapters of the initial manuscript. This has been a challenging book to write. I thank the two reviewers for their insightful suggestions, whose potential I have yet to fully fulfill. Steve Neale, Dan North, and Helen Hanson gave valuable feedback on a chapter each. I have lost count of the numerous friends and colleagues who pointed me to or provided me with research materials, and I thank them all. Katherine Waugh generously sent me a copy of the documentary The Art of Time (2009), which she made with Fergus Daly. I am especially grateful to Rey Chow, Jake Bevan, and Joe...