Days Of Being Wild. (12A.)
Directed by Wong Kar Wai.
Starring Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Andy Lau, Carina Lau, Rebecca Pan and Jacky Cheung. 94 mins.
As Tears Go By is hardly back of a bus ugly, but this first collaboration with Christopher Doyle is a game-changing/ wipe the slate clean moment. The visual richness of this trip back to Hong Kong in the early 1960s is almost indecent.
As luck would have it, I saw this the same week as Ridley Scott's Someone To Watch Over Me, which is an immaculate looking film but the pristine sheen of its imagery has no pull. It's certainly glossy but ultimately the immaculate cinematography just glosses over anything of interest. Days of Being Wild is a 90-minute swoon of gorgeousness, with green dominating the colour scheme, but there's a grit to it. These surfaces aren't being glossed over, the life is buffed up out of them.
I won't spoil it, but the film has one of the most out-of-nowhere, WTF finales this side of Tim Burton's Planet Of The Apes. It's a minute-long scene in a room and you could happily watch it stretched out for an hour, such is its absurd opulence.
There's a price to pay for this. This second film sees Wong go back to the 60s to follow a playboy Leslie Cheung who dabbles with the affections of Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau while fighting with his adoptive mother (Pan) and its visual richness borders on stultifying. Movement is largely frowned upon. There were many problems sourcing locations to fit the period setting which meant that framing options were restricted and tight. As a result, there's rarely more than two people in a scene and nobody in the background. It's as if 1960s Hong Kong was a ghost town.
After the conventional gangster dramatics of As Tears Go By, this is the Wong Kar Wai we will grow accustomed to. No real plot, just a few romantic situations resolving themselves in a casual but contrived manner. Days Of Being Mild really, but the climactic sequences in the Philippines conjures up some excitement, as well as throwing open the windows to let a bit of air in.
Review of Chungking Express
Directed by Wong Kar Wai.
Starring Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Andy Lau, Carina Lau, Rebecca Pan and Jacky Cheung. 94 mins.
As Tears Go By is hardly back of a bus ugly, but this first collaboration with Christopher Doyle is a game-changing/ wipe the slate clean moment. The visual richness of this trip back to Hong Kong in the early 1960s is almost indecent.
As luck would have it, I saw this the same week as Ridley Scott's Someone To Watch Over Me, which is an immaculate looking film but the pristine sheen of its imagery has no pull. It's certainly glossy but ultimately the immaculate cinematography just glosses over anything of interest. Days of Being Wild is a 90-minute swoon of gorgeousness, with green dominating the colour scheme, but there's a grit to it. These surfaces aren't being glossed over, the life is buffed up out of them.
I won't spoil it, but the film has one of the most out-of-nowhere, WTF finales this side of Tim Burton's Planet Of The Apes. It's a minute-long scene in a room and you could happily watch it stretched out for an hour, such is its absurd opulence.
There's a price to pay for this. This second film sees Wong go back to the 60s to follow a playboy Leslie Cheung who dabbles with the affections of Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau while fighting with his adoptive mother (Pan) and its visual richness borders on stultifying. Movement is largely frowned upon. There were many problems sourcing locations to fit the period setting which meant that framing options were restricted and tight. As a result, there's rarely more than two people in a scene and nobody in the background. It's as if 1960s Hong Kong was a ghost town.
After the conventional gangster dramatics of As Tears Go By, this is the Wong Kar Wai we will grow accustomed to. No real plot, just a few romantic situations resolving themselves in a casual but contrived manner. Days Of Being Mild really, but the climactic sequences in the Philippines conjures up some excitement, as well as throwing open the windows to let a bit of air in.
Review of Chungking Express
