What's going on in there?

The most anticipated local film this week will no doubt be Tsai Ming-liang's (蔡明亮) Berlin Film Festival winner The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲). This controversial movie about love, sex and the porn industry set to vintage musical sequences will surely create even more discussion after its release.

Like Tsai's previous films, the The Wayward Cloud is almost a silent film with fewer than 10 conversations between characters. The sounds of the movie are old songs and the moaning of sex.

The plot of Cloud vaguely continues the story of Tsai's 2001 feature What Time Is It There (你那邊幾點), in which watch vendor Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng, 李康生) encounters Hsiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi, 陳湘琪) on the skywalk before she departs for France. Now Shiang-chyi returns to Taipei and Hsiao-kang finds a new job acting in pornos.

It is summertime and severe drought has hit Taiwan. The government urges people to use water sparingly. The only thing to quench thirst is watermelon. Watermelon here is not just a juicy fruit but is also a metaphor of desire. It appears in several dance sequences as well as a sex scene where Hsiao-kang licks a watermelon that is placed in between the thighs of Japanese adult video actress Sumomo Yozakura.

Shiang-chyi follows Hsiao-kang and secretly watches him having sex with an unconscious Yozakura. She gets excited and begins to long for him and eventually, she fellates him.

The musical sequences form another line in the film, representing fantasy and emotions in the mind.

Actress Yang Kui-mei (楊貴媚) performs a song with two dozen female dancers by a public toilet at the Taichung Freeway interchange. She wears an outfit with sharply augmented breasts and dances seductively with a man wearing a hat in the shape of the glans of the penis.

Chen Shiang-chyi sings a song with actress Lu Yi-ching (陸弈靜) by the National Palace Museum, the two of them caressing the legs of the statue of Chiang Kai-shek as they sing. And Lee, Chen and Lu together sing a song by the Dragon and Tiger Tower in Kaohsiung with background dancers playing with bizarre watermelon umbrellas.

These sequences look more campy than splendid and are more amusing than an emotionally touching way of describing the desire of the characters in the film.

The most problematic aspect of the film is the misogynistic portrayals rampant in the film. The way Hsiao-kang treats porn actress Yozakura could be seen as rape. And the fact that all women in the film are presented as wanting Hsiao-kang penis may disgust many female watchers.

Despite the controversies, Tsai remains a precise filmmaker and is very clear and sharp on what he wants to express. But is the film really about love and desire? or has it only presented banality and cruelty in regard sex? The audience can form its own judgment.

As for news in the local industry, Central Motion Pictures Corporation (中影, CMPC), Taiwan's oldest film studio, last week announced the start of shooting for its 2005 film tentatively titled Melody of the Soul (心靈之歌). The film aims to be the first movie introducing the unique octad choir of the Bunun tribe of Taiwanese Aborigines. Shooting will be mainly in the Bunun villages of Nantou county.

Documentary director and professor at Chang Jung Christian University's media technology department Wu Hong-hsiang (吳宏翔) will be directing his debut feature. The film's leading cast includes Chiu Kai-wei (邱凱偉), who is a familiar face in TV commercials, and Holiday Dreaming lead actress Chang Jun-ning (張鈞甯).