"The body always plays an important role in my films," says Malaysian-born filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang. "You could say the body is the most beautiful thing we have or you could say it's the ugliest thing we have. We can sell bodies, we can adore or worship bodies."
Set in an urban apartment house in the midst of a summertime drought, Tsai's made-in-Taiwan (with additional French and Chinese state funding), sexually explicit The Wayward Cloud tells the story of a fledgling pornography star who runs into the woman he once loved. Graphic sexual scenes are interspersed with outrageous musical numbers, including one featuring a dancing penis.
The film stars Lee Kang-sheng and Chen Shiang-chyi.
The Wayward Cloud is up for the Golden Bear at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival, where in 2001 Patrice Chéreau's sexually explicit Intimacy won the top prize.