The Wayward Cloud

The film’s meandering, surrealist-kissed, early scenes dance nicely in time with his urban protagonist’s disconnected, existential malaise.

Wrongly branded misogynist by PC kneejerkers, this is a scathing assault on the exploitative nature of pornography and the emptiness of sex without love.

Tsai's most off-putting work is nonetheless worthy of intense and ongoing consideration.

[A] highly idiosyncratic semi-musical.

It feels willed, aggressive and unconvincing -- clammy rather than cool -- in a way that suggests artistic frustration rather than discovery. The water shortage may be a metaphor for the director’s creative desiccation, which his admirers can only hope is temporary.

Tsai's obvious disgust at the sex is part of what makes the film so unpleasant; he remains a brilliant original, but this is a parody of his gifts.

The Wayward Cloud fails as allegory, human story, anti-porn screed, postmodern musical, and even formal delight (Tsai's emptied-out aesthetic has never felt so empty, his mannerisms so pointlessly mannered), but it seems to have worked well enough as a necessary purge.