DAILY TIGER
NEDERLANDSE EDITIE Z.O.Z
39TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM #5 MONDAY 1 FEBRUARy 2010
photo: Ruud Jonkers
Tsai Ming-liang
Mirror man IFFR veteran Tsai Ming-liang recently converted to Buddhism; this had a profound effect on the making of his new film Visage, he tells Alain Devraux
Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang is generally known for his minimalist style. So the 141-minute Visage, commissioned by the Louvre, is something of an epic for him. The textured and colourful film tells the story of a filmmaker trying to film a version of Salome in the Paris museum. Filmic references, musical scenes, exuberance and melodrama abound in what Rotterdam programmers describe as a “wonderful mass of film pleasure exploding with excitement and ideas.” Window on the West
The scale of the work didn’t phase Tsai, he says. “There was a difficult period around the halfway mark, when we were trying to get the finances organised. It was a complex set-up tied in with dis-
tribution issues. That got complicated, but the producers dealt with it. The scale of the production was fine for me. In fact, the Louvre gave me all the freedom I needed – I had never had that much freedom on a film before.” Tsai says he did face an artistic challenge. The commission mandated that the film had to be shot in and around the Louvre, and he was a taken aback by the vastness of the cultural information held inside. “It houses such a huge collection of Western art,” says Tsai. “Even though I spent three years getting to know the Louvre, it still remained an unknown territory to me. I wasn’t sure how to approach the subject, as I didn’t feel comfortable commenting on Western art. But during the making of the film, I found an angle to make it work. I decided to start from my own experiences of watching Western films. Watching films – mainly French New Wave movies – gave me a window on the West. Movie references suddenly came to my aid and gave me a way to deal with the subject of the Louvre.”
HEAD ON
The narrative is pegged to a filmmaker’s attempt to shoot a version of the Biblical myth of Salome. Tsai decided to adapt the story to his own Eastern viewpoint. “I took an individual approach. It’s more of a Buddhist iteration of the Salome myth. It’s my own personal retelling of the myth that takes it away from Western Biblical portrayals of her.” Salome arrived in the film by chance, says Tsai: “I discovered a gallery which had many paintings of John the Baptist. I became interested in him. Then I found a gallery with a picture of Salome holding up his severed head. I found her a fascinating and intriguing woman. That is how she entered the film.” Tsai continues: “Over the last few years I have become more interested in Buddhism and have become a Buddhist. I think it connects with my life in all sorts of ways. I thought it would be interesting to approach John the Baptist’s character in a Buddhist way. There is a Buddhist saying that goes,
‘flowers in the mirror, the moon on water.’ This saying means that everything you have seen is not real. It’s a reflection of something. It’s an illusion. It would be really great if audiences who watch the film get a similar feeling from the experience.” A FOREST
Tsai says that he has built this philosophy into the mechanics of the film: “I use a lot of mirrors to give a sense of illusion. That’s especially true of the scene near the start, set in the garden. We used fifty mirrors for that. the Louvre garden doesn’t really have that many trees. But the way we positioned the mirrors made it look like a forest. That gives the scene a kind of fake look. I wanted that fake quality – I wanted the audience to be aware that they were watching a film, an illusion, not a reality.” Visage – Tsai Ming-liang Sat 6-2 12:30 CI4