I Don't Want to Sleep Alone

Malaysia, 2006 (118 min) Malay, Mandarin, Bengali with English subtitles

Director: Tsai Ming-liang

Cast: Lee Kang-sheng, Chen Shiang-chyi, Norman Atun, Pearlly Chua, Liew Lee-Lin, Leonard Tee, Toh Su-Yee, Chiew Kok-Fai, Chan Rong-Sin, Loh Kok-Choy, Shiva, Mohammad Rani Bin Baker

After being robbed and attacked one night in Kuala Lumpur, Hsiao-kang, a homeless Chinese man, is rescued and taken in by some Bangladeshi workers. One of them, Rawang, lets him sleep beside him on an old mattress that he had found on the street. Later, when Chyi, a waitress at a coffee-shop, meets Hsiao-kang, she is filled with lustful desire. As Hsiao-kang slowly recovers, he finds himself caught between Rawang and Chyi – as well as Chyi’s female boss.

Shooting for the first time in Malaysia, director Tsai Ming-Liang returns to his birthplace with a film unlike any of his prior works. Different in texture, mood and feel, and featuring a cast of multi-cultural and multi-lingual characters, the vivid, crowded, neon-lit streets of Kuala Lumpur come alive as the director ponders the nature of relationships, physical and non-physical, using minimal dialogue to achieve an even greater intimacy between his actors. I DON T WANT TO SLEEP ALONE was one of seven films commissioned for the Weiner Mozart New Crowned Hope Festival, Vienna 2006 celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart. The soundtrack floats through scenes like the smoke and ash from the real life forest fires in neighboring Indonesia that left Kuala Lumpur engulfed in an otherworldly haze during the shooting of the film.

Ticket Information
Free

Event Sponsor
Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Mānoa Campus

More Information
956-2688, cseas@Hawaii.edu, http://www.cseashawaii.com/wordpress/2010/10/sleep-alone/

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