A docu-fiction that may not be as fully-formed as Tsai’s previous films, but still feels somewhat rewarding if you surrender to its modulated slow cinema style.

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Is it right to call Days a docu-fiction?  Maybe. 

But in Tsai Ming-liang’s latest feature film, he blurs that thin line between fiction and reality to an even greater extent as his camera captures his two actors—one (Lee Kang-sheng) very familiar to those who have been surveying Tsai’s works over the decades, and the other (Anong Houngheuangsy), a new face who might soon be familiar if rumours of a sequel to Days do come to fruition. 

On this note, one might see Days as a spiritual sequel to the even earlier and more fully-formed I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (2006).  With a Golden Bear competition slot at Berlin, one might accord some seriousness to Tsai’s work here, though I personally find this to be a minor film of his. 

Running at two hours, which feels all of its length as Tsai’s modulated slow cinema style takes center stage again. Made up of only a handful of shots, some flowing for more than 20 minutes without any cuts, Days could be Tsai’s most austere film to date. 

But it also seemingly suggests a new phase for his filmmaking, relying on low-fi digital cameras and what seems like a shoestring budget to continue innovating artistically, including intentionally having no subtitles in what is a largely dialogue-free film.  The anti-Tsai brigade will certainly be repelled by this, but those fully converted already will find it somewhat rewarding. 

Days is a tale of two men whose days of loneliness and isolation are so stifling that when they meet in a hotel room in a centrepiece 20-plus minute erotic massage, they find a rare connection undergirding the physical intimacy. 

Some of the most poetic moments in the film come in the form of Chaplin’s music for ‘Limelight’ as produced by a music box, incidentally also reproduced in I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone in a song sung by the great Li Xianglan, forging some kind of cosmic interconnectedness.    

Grade: B

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Trailer: