Tsai’s Sketchbook (CIFF 09)
FACE is a 3.9 million home movie. Tsai Ming-Liang intended to call the film SALOME; maybe somewhere along the way he realized he couldn’t make the film he set out for, so what he edited together instead are sketches, scenes seemingly in rehearsal, odd ideas, musical numbers and bits of slapstick. You end up thinking of the final subtitle (of many) Godard gives his KING LEAR — “A STUDY.” It begins with fully formed ideas — the first image of the film is one of Tsai’s greatest inventions, and the last shot is a great bit of slow comedy — as concrete as the front and back covers of a sketchbook. In between, as in a sketchbook, are jotted notes, pencil and ink drawings, and, of course, blank pages. The only difference is that, when paging through a sketchbook, we skip the blanks, while Tsai holds each in front of us for the same duration as the most detailed drawings.