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Watching a Tsai Ming-liang movie is like looking at a very expensive work of art. You can't buy it, so you can only enjoy the experience.

Tsai spent two of the three years it took to make his US$6-million saga "Face" ("Visage") on research and location scouting.

He shot 30 per cent of it in Taipei, and the rest in and around Paris' Louvre, where it's become the first entry in the museum's permanent film collection.

Though based on the Bible tale of Salome, "Face" - screening until yesterday at the World Film Festival of Bangkok - is anything but biblical. It makes brilliant use of Tsai's signature style, involving long, quiet scenes at medium range that take viewers through the whole gamut of emotions.

"It's hard to describe my films with a message," Tsai told Daily Xpress after receiving the festival's Lotus Award for cinematic achievement.

"But you can 'see' how the characters feel ... their anxieties and inability to control circumstances."

Tsai is nevertheless surprised that "Face" has been nominated for a Golden Horse - the so-called "Chinese Oscar" - which he regards as being the domain of mass-market cinema.

There is, he said, "a need to acknowledge that cinema has an artistic component".

"There are two choices for filmmakers. One is to do what the market wants, and the other is to be yourself and create your own work and style. I chose the latter."

It's not easy bucking the Hollywood trend, but Tsai persists. "I am becoming old. I have to do what I want to do. The market is very elusive to me, and it doesn't need my presence. My concern is how I can have more freedom to create films."

Dedicated to mother

"Face" stars Tsai's frequent collaborator Lee Kang-sheng, who plays a director making a movie at the Louvre about Salome, who is portrayed by European supermodel Laetitia Casta.

The shoot is interrupted when the director's mother dies and he has to return to Taipei, a mirror of the fact that Tsai's mother died while he was making "Face". He's dedicated the film to her.

Tsai considers "Face" a turning point: He's learned to accept the public perception of him as an "artist" rather than a moviemaker.

"Right from the beginning I was called an 'art-film director', but that didn't help the audience understand why there is art in films. Many people consider films entertainment, rather than art."

"Face", he said, was a chance to make a movie for an audience he knew would appreciate it - not least at the Louvre.

There's something else special about this project. Tsai's films always reflect his state of mind at the time he was shooting.

"When I was making 'The Wayward Cloud' I was very angry and frustrated, for many reasons, and it showed in the finished film."

But "Face", he said, is an accurate self-portrait.