I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006)

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (黑眼圈) is a great Tsai Ming-liang movie, easily my favorite film of his. It's so tender and so compassionate, and it unfurls carefully and intelligently. I was particularly taken with the Malaysian actor Norman Atun, whom Tsai apparently discovered on the street before putting him in the movie. I loved this film. It's super weird, and super smart, and centrally – like all of Tsai's films – about loneliness and class inequality.

The poster makes I Don't Want to Sleep Alone look gayer than it is. It is gay, of course, but the man on the right (Atun) is helping the man on the left (Tsai's muse Lee Kang-sheng) – who has been very badly beaten – to urinate. It's not the sexiest of scenarios.