Best known for his slow and hypnotic international art film favorites like Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Vive l'amour, and The Wayward Cloud, Taiwan-based filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang has built up a substantial if not extremely prolific career with his trademark long, meditative takes and the use of actor Lee Kang-Sheng in all of his projects. After 2013, he shifted to an unscripted approach including his art installation projects and films nurtured out of what was happening in the vicinity around him. Two of those features can be found in the 2024 U.K. Blu-ray double feature from Second Run, both with Lee in what amounts to a fly on the wall examination of the lyricism in day-to-day life.

First up is Days (Rìzi), a nearly dialogue-free look at two men, Kang (Kang-sheng) and Non (Anong Houngheuangsy, a Laotian immigrant non-actor at the time). Kang lives in a comfortable but very empty house while Non inhabits a small apartment and works in the city doing various jobs. Their paths cross in Bangkok when Kang, who has been undergoing various procedures for upper body pain, hires Non for a massage, which leads to a poetic gesture that closes out the film in a wistful note.

Created from several years of filming after Ming-Liang had announced his retirement from narrative features, Days is impressionistic and yet very controlled in the way it uses sound and framing over the course of its very few but lengthy shots. Even more than in his prior films, the director seems to be fascinated by the way the human face and body process their surroundings and connect with each other, and his ongoing fascination with Kang-Sheng 's screen presence carries over here to Houngheuangsy who holds his own simply existing in front of the camera.

The co-feature on a separate Blu-ray here is Afternoon (Na ri xia wu), a simple static shot (with slight editorial tweaking) running 137 minutes capturing a tranquil conversation between Kang-Sheng and Ming-Liang that wanders freely through religion, their work together (as business partners and cohabitants), their contrasting sexualities, religion, and much more. A literal hangout film, it's a fascinating peek at how the artistic process and personal relationships intersect between two people we've seen collaborating for decades; there aren't really any unspoken elephants in the room here as much as an easy rapport that allows them to change the subject whenever they feel like it.

Both films were first released on English-friendly Blu-ray in 2022 in the U.S. from Grasshopper Films, while the U.K. debut makes for a fine presentation with faultless reproductions of both features. Days boasts DTS-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0 Mandarin audio (not much need for subtitles here really, but they are offered), while Afternoon is stereo with subtitles and sounds fine given how minimal the mix is. A 2001 interview with Ming-Liang (26m56s) covers the film's creation after Stray Dogs, Kang-Sheng's sudden illness that signified his permanent break with the youthful actor from before, and the free-form process of building the film through mundane filming procedures. 2021's Wandering (34m25s) is a dreamy short capturing solo spectators, including the director himself, at one of his art installation projects, "Walkers." "Days Passed" (3m18s) is a sort of visual essay about Kang-Sheng as captured in numerous projects by the director, followed by two teasers and two trailers. On the second disc you get a trailer and a lengthy, very warm festival Q&A between Ming-Liang and Tony Rayns (78m27s) who cover the record-breaking union between director and actor, the themes of his films, his process of paring a feature from the materials of real life, and the reactions he hopes to instill in his viewers. An insert booklet features an essay by So Mayer focusing on Days and its slippery depiction of time, its place in the director's filmography, and the implications of its use of sex work as part of the narrative. Incidentally, the package comes with a 15 rating for "strong sex," which seems awfully harsh given what's actually in the first film.

Reviewed on October 18, 2024.