One of the most successful directors from Hong Kong , the award-winning Wong Kar Wai has developed an international reputation which equals cinematic masters such as Truffaut, Kurosawa, Nergman and Almodovar.
Wong Kar Wai's stylish, avant garde craftsmanship has been shaped with his regular collaborator, the renowned Christopher Doyle, and he's inspired film-makers including Richard Jobson's directorial debut 16 Years Of Alcohol. He has also attracted a cast of regular Hong Kong actors who have found increasing international fame, including Tony Leung (Infernal Affairs, Hero), Maggie Cheung (In The Mood For Love, Hero), Andy Lau (Infernal Affairs, House of Flying Daggers) and Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern). With his much anticipated new film 2046 out at cinemas he has already cast Nicole Kidman in his next project, The Lady From Shanghai.
To tie-in with the current cinema release of his swooning, sci-fi love story 2046, Tartan Video have released some of Wong Kar-Wai's earliest work on DVD for reappraisal. The trio of films certainly make for interesting viewing, chronicling the development of one of World Cinema's most celebrated film-makers from visual stylist to full blown avant-garde auteur responsible for such modern classics as Chungking Express, Happy Together and In The Mood For Love.
His debut feature, As Tears Go By (1988) announces many of the visual and thematic motifs that will snake throughout Wong's career. Intensely emotional characters clash against each other in moody, dilapidated, interiors and overcrowded, neon-drenched streets; the minutiae of the everyday is scrutinised and invested with unknowable significance; shutter speeds and exposure levels are manipulated to give sequences a staccato, dream like ambience.
The story follows a debt collector (Andy Lau) and his frustrated attempts to extricate himself from the spiral of violence and revenge of gangland life. However, his compulsion to escape the city for the rural sanctuary of Lantau Island and the love of his sickly cousin (Maggie Cheung), is repeatedly hampered by his bond to his younger brother (Jacky Cheung), a reckless, unpredictable wannabe gangster, desperate to prove himself, but in way over his head.
Heavily indebted to Scorsese's Mean Streets (the famous pool-room brawl is directly quoted), the film is very nearly completely derailed by a truly awful soundtrack: instead of 'Be My Baby' or 'Jumping Jack Flash', we get lashings of interminable, nerve jangling eighties Chinese pop. Luckily, Wong's inventive visual sense is always evident, and certain scenes (such as the brutal revenge sequence early in the film) literally leap from the screen and demand the viewers' unblinking attention. Relationships that initially appear very simply drawn burst into violent life with a pair of unusually intense performance from Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung as the doomed gangsters.
Marking his first collaboration with cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Days Of Being Wild (1990) was the film to establish Wong's cinematic reputation in Asia , winning several gongs at The Hong Kong Film Awards. Taking its title from the Hong Kong name for Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without A Cause , Wong's second feature follows vain, sexually opportunistic playboy Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) through a series of loveless conquests that fail to compensate for the coldness of his adopted mother, and the absence of his biological mother. The amoral hero discards his lovers as quickly as he attracts them, yet seems to find no satisfaction in his dalliances. The opening scene depicts his relentless seduction of naïve shop girl Lai (Maggie Cheung), yet he soon moves onto the easy affections of Carina Lau's showgirl, who proves less willing to be dumped. Also drawn into Yuddy's sphere are his luckless friend (Jacky Cheung), and a lonely cop (Andy Lau) who falls for Lai.
A definite shift from the violent genre aesthetics of his debut, this feels much more connected to Wong's later works; not only in its artfully retro setting, obsession with time, and rain-swept night-time exteriors, but also in its mesmerising exploration of the relationships between men and women, and the inexplicable motives of desire that drives them. Lacking his later kinetic editing style, Days Of Being Wild prefers a more stately, elegiac tone and the ravishing cinematography of Christopher Doyle. His composition, camera movement and use of depth of field is as elegant as raw silk and elevates this period melodrama into the status of minor classic.
The third release from Tartan is the wildly entertaining Chinese Odyssey (2002), directed by Jeff Lau and produced by Wong Kar Wai. A crowd pleasing, knockabout, historical epic, this is the story of two sets of siblings: the first a young Emperor and his sister the Princess, who are desperate to escape the stifling Forbidden City and see something of the world; the second, Yilong (Tony Leung) and Pheonix (Vicky Zhao Wei), poor and tough, but devoted to each other. When the Princess (Fay Wong) escapes her castle dressed as a man, she befriends the pair, quickly falling for Yilong - while Pheonix falls for 'him' in return. With this Twelfth Night - style, Shakespearean set up, the film-makers unleash a riotous romantic comedy, full of broad, visual jokes and spoofs on Asian blockbusters (such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Rashomon and many of Wong Kar Wai's own films.). The production design and cinematography is beautifully realised, and the performances and sight gags constantly diverting, but just as the viewer has become attuned to the light tone of the piece, a genuinely affecting love story emerges, and themes that resonate with Wong's more 'serious' work (the fleeting opportunity that can define one's future; the malleable nature of identity.).
These three very different films not only provide an intriguing background to Wong Kar Wai's glittering career, they also act as a testament to the overall quality of Asian cinema as a whole. The uninitiated should definitely take a look.
Gus Alvarez
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