Days (2020) review

Two men, Kang (Tsai regular Lee Kang-Sheng) and Non (Houngheuangsy Anong), go about their business - Kang gets neck treatments and stares off into space, Non washes and prepares food - before they eventually meet for a sexual massage and then go back to their normal routines.  One of Tsai's recurring themes has been the desire for human connection - which is an even bigger problem in 2020 with the 'leaked' Wuhan Bioweapon keeping most of the globe in quarantine - except the minimalist long-takes (think: James Benning Goes to Taiwan) make it kind of tedious and hardly illuminating, and you have to wonder whether or not that twenty-plus minute rubdown session is just an exercise in overkill.  The decision to go virtually dialogue free is an interesting one - an opening title card reads that it's "intentionally unsubtitled" (making its message not local but universal) - although I feel he accomplished the same idea in his 2015 short No No Sleep.