MovieChat Forums > Visage (2009) Discussion > TIFF screening

TIFF screening

posted 15 years ago by bruan
7 replies | jump to latest

Surprised to hear about the generally cold reception at other film festivals (as per previous threads)

Attended a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. While the film wasn't my cup of tea (mind you, this is my first TML film) There were no noticeable walk-outs and no booing. There was sporadic applause upon conclusion.

For discussion purposes, please keep in mind that the Toronto Film Fest is public and geared more towards the general audience, and every day movie goers (hence the importance of the Audience Choice Award) rather a focus on awards by juries, critics, industry film makers etc.

[–] davidevoid 15 years ago

It's good to see it didn't get a hostile reception.

I was hoping it would play the BFI london film festival but sadly it's not, so i doubt it's going to play England. So you count yourself lucky that you even got the chance to see this film! hahaha...

What about the film wasn't your 'cup of tea' as you put it? Just wondering...

[–] bruan 15 years ago

I've only seen the trailer prior to viewing this film and relatively was expecting a visual feast. While the film delivered key aesthetic scenes (The lighter in the pitch-black room scene for one, was a delight to watch) It just felt like there wasn't a strong enough underlying plot or idea to carry the film for the full 130+ minutes. Either it was the case that the visual presentations by the director were too cryptic to decipher, or that there weren't any/enough solidly engaging elements for the audience to grasp onto... The more minimally unique moments (such as the flock of birds circling the fountain, the strand of saliva lingering, Jean-Pierre Léaud's deep gaze into the mirror) suffered because of miscommunication, resulting in uncertainty of plot.

This of course, is all dependent on the audience. The film is as it is, created by the director with full intent, and one must respect it as such. Those who are more familiar to Tsai Ming Liang's style might be able to extract more substance from a film such as this. To the average movie goer however (this would be the target audience of the TIFF) Visage was a film that was compositionally pleasant, stylistically different, and narratively unforgiving.

[–] gdcrowe-1 15 years ago

Unlike Cannes, TIFF goers usually give warm receptions to just about any film. For example, Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" got polite applause at TIFF after getting harshly booed at Cannes, (although it had been recut between cannes and tiff).

I was at the Thursday TIFF screening, I noticed maybe 8 or 9 walkouts and there was polite applause at the end, but the crowd didn't seem as in to it as they were at the screening of "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" that I saw at TIFF a few years ago.

Personally I've seen several of Tsai Ming-liang's films, and he just seems off his game here. His other films have the same slow paced style (I think one film of his I saw had no dialog for the first 40 minutes) but usually his shot composition is so good it's enjoyable, here it just seems a little off.

And in his other films, the sparse cast makes sense in that usually theres an explanation as to why so few people are around, like there's some virus going around or the setting is a large movie theatre that's closing down. In "Face" they're filming a movie but you never see any crew members, which is kind of silly when you see hundreds of people listed in the end credits.

And the film is very long at 139 minutes, usually he keeps it between 80 and 120. I really like the films of this director but this one didn't do a lot for me.

[–] davidevoid 15 years ago

Thanks to both of you for your insight into this film. Obviously there is no way of saying objectively whether a film is good or bad but i really hope this isn't as bad as some people are making it out to be.

It's strange with Tsai's films in that over time he seems to be getting bigger audiences going to his films and wider distribution of his newer films in comparison to his earlier films yet the more viewings a film of his has on ImDb the lower the rating will be...

And even with fanatics of his films there seems to be different bands that people fall into... the most prominent being those who seem to love everything he has done thus far (such as myself!) and those who say that from What Time Is It There? onward that his films have been terrible imitations of his earlier self. In particular The Wayward Cloud gets some very hostile reviews...

Have either of you seen The Wayward Cloud or The Hole before seeing this movie?? I was wondering what kind of songs are song within this movie, as with the past two they were mimed songs to past musical numbers (such as those by Grace Chang mimed to in The Hole)...

I was also wondering how these musical pieces integrate with the plot as in The Hole they seem to represent a Utopian 'other realm' for the female protagonist, almost like wishes or wondering thoughts that seem to transform and utilize the derelict living spaces that they find themselves in. Sadly i can't really remember how they relate to the story in The Wayward Cloud but one thing i do notice as they seem to come from both female and male protagonists...

Lastly! Has anyone else noticed that the only films of his that use musical numbers are those where the story is of the relationship between a man and a woman rather than a homosexual relationship which you find in all his non-musical films... just a thought!

All the best

[–] the_crystal-image 15 years ago

The songs are indeed mimed--two to old Chinese pop, and one to a much newer Spanish-language song. I have a feeling that there's a fourth I'm forgetting at the moment.

The songs largely work in isolation from the film as a whole, as internal coherence wasn't very high on Tsai's checklist for this film. They tend not to stand out against the rest of the film as much as in The Hole and Wayward Cloud because the non-song material in this film is much more fragmented and sketchy, seemingly stitched together from footage that could have otherwise been from at least two distinct films. Goodbye, Dragon Inn might be something of a benchmark to describe the film's wispy, anecdotal feel, but Visage goes much further in the direction of unadulterated plotlessness.

Visage also breaks the formula of the musicals you mentioned. There's no real primary relationship in the film to speak of, although there is a frequent fascination with the erotic that leads to some of the film's best imagery, and, interestingly, funniest moments.

On a side note, I really don't think that Tsai will have to worry about a large audience bringing down his aggregate rating on this film. I'd be shocked if this film received wider distribution than his previous films.

[–] davidevoid 14 years ago

Are you saying that Visage has less plot than Goodbye Dragon Inn? From what i know of Visage this seems like a strange occurrence...

On your last note, i thought maybe that because of this films link with the Louvre that it may, at least, gain a little more attention adn therefor would be more likely to be picked up to be shown... maybe it'll be another one of those films that i'll have to sadly wait until it appears on a far inferior DVD!

[–] the_crystal-image 14 years ago

Saying it has "less plot" than Goodbye Dragon Inn might not be the best way for me to put it. If saying a film has no "plot" means that things don't happen in it, well, things certainly happen in Visage, and with greater frequency than Goodbye Dragon Inn. And the things that happen are things that generally would be called "plot points" in any other film (i.e., a director's film is beset by disasters, a family deals with death). But the way that Tsai assembles these happenings just doesn't resemble a narrative construction. That's why I think Goodbye Dragon Inn seems like a good starting point of Tsai's for describing how the film fits together. Venturing outside of Tsai, I might compare this film to some of Pere Portabella's films: just because "things happen" doesn't mean that the film has any concern with presenting itself as a narrative.

I'd be surprised if the link with the Lourvre led anywhere with this film. I was very surprised that the location wasn't used more prominently. Out of the locations used in the film, it was much more easy for me to pinpoint the graveyard that's apparently near Jean-Pierre Léaud's house from What Time Is It There and, of course, the Lee family apartment than it was for me to tell if any given scene was actually shot in the Louvre or not (with the exception of literally one shot). The film's connection with the museum doesn't show up as prominently on the screen in the way that, for instance, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's use of Musée d’Orsay in Flight of the Red Balloon.

But I do think it will end up on DVD eventually. I'd just bet against any sort of major art-house theatrical run.