Writer, curator, and author of the upcoming book Revolutionary Desires: The Political Power of the Sex Scene, Xuanlin Tham joins us to discuss the work of Taiwanese New Wave director Tsai Ming-liang and his 1994 film Vive L'Amour. It's a quietly devastating exploration of longing, desire, and urban alienation about a trio of young Tapei residents who, unbeknownst to one another, all occupy the same luxury model apartment.
We discuss the context of early 90s Tapei, its status as a bustling center of rapid economic growth and a hub for global commerce, and how this unique urban setting coupled with Tsai's outsider status as a Malaysian-born transplant inform his cinema. Then we explore the distinctive formal components of Tsai's filmmaking, its radical underpinnings, and its rejection of commodifying language or labels. Finally, we look to Tsai's evolution across the decades since Vive L'Amour and how his self-referential and increasingly sparse approach has further liberated his cinema from the strictures of capitalist impulses.
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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.