‘Back Home’ Review: In Barely an Hour Tsai Ming-liang Asks ‘What is a Home?’ [B] Venice

Tsai Ming-liang has become a progressively more esoteric filmmaker since he began his career three and a half decades ago. A lot of his recent works can only be seen at festivals, museums or retrospectives. While an acquired taste, his style is well established. Yet there were still walkouts dripping all through the first press and industry screening of Back Home at Venice Film Festival, as if all the minutiae were anything new. Those who stuck with it and clapped in the end clearly knew what to expect. 

To be sure, Back Home is a challenge. Lee Kang-sheng, Tsai’s muse, alter ego and go-to leading man through the years, is not even present. Aside from its title, the film itself provides no context whatsoever. Externally, there are no press notes or photos available to download in the festival portal. The only tidbit to help us make sense of the proceedings is a synopsis from the program. In early 2025, the Malaysian Taiwanese filmmaker accompanied Anong Houngheuangsy, who starred in Tsai’s Days, on a visit to the actor’s home in Laos. There’s scant dialogue and no subtitles for the piddling amount of Laotian spoken. 

Tsai painstakingly documents myriad structures in rural Laos, most of them shoddy shacks constructed with wood, bamboo or bricks and raised on stilts. Some have patches of ribbed metal panels. Some have pastel paint jobs. Some have the entry and windows boarded up. Some are crooked. Some are wrapped in bamboo scaffolding. Some have not been completed. If you stare at these fixed shots long enough, your mind may drift away. But silently, these gradually deconstruct the first-world, Western ideas of home.  

What makes a home? A roof? The walls? Or the door? A few of the houses are missing one or more of the above. You can see right through many of them. They have little furniture inside. Curtains serve as room dividers. It’s an entirely different culture and way of life.  

The Houngheuangsy family, which also includes Surat, Wijit and Wankaew, leads a monk-like existence, with scant worldly possessions. They ruminate. They daydream. They stare into the distance. It’s slow living. There are no diversions like TVs or smart phones., though an odd satellite dish installed on one of the homes cautions us to be wary of any broad generalizations. 

Livestock roam freely, though serene nature shots are often disrupted by motor running in the background. Later we discover that, aside from traffic, the noise also comes from carver masons creating Buddha sculptures.  

Tsai’s works reward those who are observant, curious and patient. He simply isn’t going to spoonfeed his audience – which may confound and frustrate the average viewer. To make the most of his films, we must take the initiative to engage with the material and seek our own answers. At minimum, we have to contemplate how people in certain parts of the world live without the amenities we take for granted. 

The cinematography is crisp and entrancing, it’s amazing that Tsai is able to produce this kind of quality with only a Canon camcorder and a Leica camera. Chang Jhong-yuan’s dexterous editing helps take the guesswork out of trying to decipher the meaning of it all.  

Like many of Tsai’s short films and non-features, Back Home probably will remain a curio that cinephiles will have to seek out. Aside from defying narrative conventions, the piece is only 56 minutes long. Fans who don’t have the wherewithal to travel to film festivals will probably have no access to it. Too bad that Tsai hasn’t reached the stature of Pedro Almodóvar so as to warrant commercial releases of his shorts. Though in the age of streaming, I don’t see why auteur-forward collections aren’t adding these to their libraries.

Grade: B

This review is from the 2025 Venice Film Festival where Back Home had its world premiere. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.