Tsai Ming-Liang
Slowly, I realized realism in cinema is not the same as realism in life. Cinema has its own realism. The world in cinema is not the real world. It has been crafted. That makes cinema interesting. It's not real. It's closer to dreams. If you treat life as a dream, you can understand this. My later films became freer because my realism doesn't have to be like real life. My realism can be treated as dreams. But they are still realistic with a lot of absurdities. So my later films are more internal. I don't care so much about external reality. That's why you don't see computers in my films because they are not realistic. [chuckles] (https://asiasociety.org/tsai-ming-liang-cinema-has-its-own-realism)
When you watch the films of Tsai Ming-Liang, these remarks of his make a lot of sense. The narrative is not the main thing. It's there, but it's not the main impression you come away with. There is more attention given to what you can see, to the surface of things. Also to people's faces. In this way, the films are like paintings. When something happens in shot, like the shoe floating across clear, shallow water on a flooded kitchen floor in Rebels of the Neon God, it is no longer what it is. This is something hard to describe, but you know it when you see it and there is an important after-effect.