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The Hollywood Reporter (Michael Rechtshaffen):
“It's an achingly poignant meditation on passion and loneliness in oxygen-choked Kuala Lumpur… should be Tsai's best received release since 2001's "What Time Is It There?"”
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Village Voice (Dennis Lim):
“Tsai Ming-liang's new film further refines and rarefies this obsessive filmmaker's established themes. The Taiwan-based director returns to Malaysia, where he was born, and gravitates to the social and economic fringes of the capital Kuala Lumpur, where half-built skyscrapers and a community of migrant workers are, respectively, the visible and invisible legacies of the economic boom and bust of the 1990s. Much of the film takes place in and around a concrete shell of a building with an ominously stagnant pool of dark water in its bowels. As usual, Tsai's near-mute characters slowly give in to an animal hunger for human contact. The film culminates with a transcendent vision of doomsday love. Even by Tsai's elevated standards, the final shot is one of otherworldly beauty.”
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New York Times (Manohla Dargis):
“One of six features commissioned for the New Crowned Hope festival that takes place in Vienna in November, which are all meant to be inspired by themes in Mozart’s work, Mr. Tsai’s most recent film, “I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone,” sounds a requiem for the common man amid the squalor of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Despite an absence of powdered wigs or the naked French women who sometimes entice American audiences into theaters, and who were of course in attendance at this year’s festival, the film should speak to anyone with a conscience.”
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EYE Weekly (Jason Anderson):
5 stars – “Expect more long, fixed-camera shots, intense but wordless exchanges among actors and a tone that freely mixes melancholy, humour and lust. Yet the geographical shift from Tsai’s familiar Taipei to his homeland of Malaysia results in both a revitalization of those elements and a new level of visual beauty. The stunning final shot makes it a masterpiece.”
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Variety (Jay Weissburg):
“There's more genuine tenderness in I Don't Want to Sleep Alone than in perhaps any of Tsai Ming-Liang's previous films… Perhaps it's the new locale, but there's more of a sense of solidarity here than in Tsai's past films. For years the foreigner in Taiwan, now he's filming foreigners in Malaysia, capturing their sense of being cut off from the society around them and making the intense sexual drive - never love, but a need for companionship - more meaningful."
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IndieWire (Anthony Kaufman):
“In the best cinematic sex scene of the year, two characters try to make love, but can't keep themselves from coughing. Though, ultimately, the film's finale is surprisingly hopeful - who knew an abandoned construction site could be so sublimely romantic?”
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In Competition, Venice Film Festival 2006
Official Selection: Toronto, Pusan, Tokyo Filmex, Vancouver, London, Hong Kong, Thessaloniki, Montreal New Cinema, Sao Paulo, Gijon, Tallinn Black Nights, Bangkok World, Reykjavik, Rotterdam
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Cinema for Peace Award, Venice Film Festival
Grand Prize, Taipei Film Festival
Special Jury Prize, Gijon Film Festival
Nominated for Best Director and Best Cinematography, Asian Film Awards
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