The intertextuality of Tsai Ming-liang's Sinofrench film, Face

Abstract

This article considers Tsai Ming-liang's second ‘Sinofrench’ film, Lian/Face (2009), as even more richly intertextual than Ni na bian ji dian/What Time is it There? (2001). The ‘Sinofrench’ entails crossover between France and the ‘sinophone world’, including Taiwan and the mainland. These interactions include intertextuality, adaptation, funding, casting and language. Face's intertextuality echoes What Time's homage to François Truffaut and his French New Wave feature debut, The 400 Blows (1959), starring Jean-Pierre Léaud. However, in Face, sponsored by the Louvre, Tsai expands the French cast beyond Léaud's cameo in What Time to Truffaut's ‘leading ladies’, thereby evoking other Truffaut films, and going beyond cinematic intertextuality to theatre (Oscar Wilde's Salomé incarnated by French supermodel Laetitia Casta in the film mise-en-abyme), music (Zhang Lu's 1940s Shanghai popular music) and painting (Leonardo da Vinci's St. John the Baptist). Intertextuality facilitates the Sinofrenchness of Face and of cinema more generally.

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