Visage

This spectacular new film by Tsai Ming-liang seems to bring his oeuvre together in a wonderful mass of film pleasure exploding with excitement and ideas. References to the film makers Truffaut and Rivette, to Western art - Face was commissioned by the Louvre - to the Bible and Buddhism and countless references to his own films turn Face into a neon sign for the everyday and heavenly obsessions of the maker. Burst water mains and erotic desires are the symbols for worlds that cannot restrain themselves and flood into each other in total surrender. Song and dance scenes tell without dialogue the story of a Taiwanese film maker who wants to film in the Louvre the myth of the seductive Salomé, but during the chaotic production he is afflicted by the illness of his mother. In essence, a story about seduction - by the arts, by bodies, by beauty.