He embraces her at the end of the previous shot in a pathetic final attempt to find some sort of comfort in an otherwise austere and unforgiving series of events taking place over an indeterminate amount of time – it seems their whole lives have been like this. A woman who seems to be the new guardian of Lee Kang-sheng’s children shrugs Lee off of her. I start Stray Dogs from the two hour and five minute mark and wait until the film cuts to its final shot – a long take of about seven minutes. We’re left wondering if we’ve witnessed Lee’s excursion over the course of the movie, or if it isn’t until he stands in this room that his journey begins. A tension between the interior and the exterior permeates the film and reaches a sort of climax near its end. Although it’s Lee’s first time here, it feels like a return somehow. At the end of the film, Lee Kang-sheng is led to a second-story room of an abandoned building we’ve seen once previously. But to go on an excursion, to go out, suggests there is a return, a coming back inside. In this way, the movie is posed as one large excursion, all of the actors entering from remote places as a sign of their going out into the world. In separate shots at the beginning of the film, Lee boards a small boat, pushing through the reeds into the water, while his children emerge from a forest. Each day seems like an excursion in which these stray dogs go out to scavenge their food for the day. However, the film’s title in Chinese is 郊遊, jiao you, which translates to “excursion,” or “going out.” Because their everyday lives are so unstructured, there are any number of excursions throughout the film. There are literal stray dogs in the movie, and the timing of their two appearances is auspicious, but it’s quickly obvious that this small family is a figurative pack of stray dogs, living where there’s just enough space, eating whatever is available. They squat in a makeshift room in an abandoned building and wash in a public restroom when they get the chance. Tsai Ming-liang’s 2013 feature, Stray Dogs, follows the mundane yet challenging daily life of a nameless father played by Lee Kang-sheng, who makes an evidently scant living holding signs advertising businesses, and Lee’s children who spend their time at the mall and at grocery stores while he works. For Tsai, the person is like a house, the body an ever-aging building. But the association is not unidirectional. You see? Every house has a story.” The cracks, textures, debris, and brokenness of buildings are representative of the experiences of the building, the lifetime of the building. The cracks in the walls are like its wrinkles. When Lee’s daughter asks her new caretaker why the apartment is such a mess, she answers, “A house is like a person.
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