Since Anaheim, and Orange County in general, is not particularly well-known for being the most liberal of California regions, this movie is definitely not for all local foreign film enthusiasts. The Wayward Cloud is an artsy Taiwanese film which contains a very generous helping of explicit sexual content. Few films can bridge that tentative gap between pornography and art – most fall short of either hiding the goods behind the pretense of philosophical social / political rationale (like Japan's The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai) or justifying exploitative love scenes as anything but an attempt at commercializing an otherwise sensually deprived film (like the nudity in almost any American drama).
This is particularly difficult to achieve in films that rely on sexual relations as an integral part of the story. The Japanese film In the Realm of the Senses actually features unsimulated sexual activity but, despite being widely censored, is generally hailed as an artistic triumph by cineastes. The Wayward Cloud succeeds by de-eroticizing the explicit scenes on the basis that they merely depict a porno actor at work. The most sensual scenes in the movie contain no nudity, explicit or implied, at all.
All that being said, The Wayward Cloud is a mish-mosh of narrative styles. While primarily utilizing the quintessential slow pacing of a foreign art film, with little dialog but plenty of symbolic imagery to represent aspects of the story's theme of an epidemic drought, viewers are practically blind-sided with joyous and colorful song and dance numbers that seem like the fruit of David Lynch and Bollywood. At the heart of it all is a decent love story, wherein watermelon plays a crucial role.
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