Wong Kar Wai Retrospective - DAYS OF BEING WILD

Continuing with our sporadic Wong Kar Wai retrospective, we come to his 1991 feature, DAYS OF BEING WILD. A critical success but a commercial failure, the movie has all the hallmarks of Wong Kar Wai's particular brand of cinema: love-lorn urban men; women unable to move on from heart-break; the beautiful, evocative camera-work of Christopher Doyle; kitsch American popular music; and a plot that is less event-driven than an exploration of character and mood.

We are Hong Kong in the 1960s. It's monsoon season and the colour-scape of the film is lush green and brooding blue. Tragic pop-star Leslie Cheung takes on the lead role of Yuddy - an emotionally jaded young man who seems unable to maintain a stable relationship with the many girls who fall in love with him. The first of these is a naive, whimpering girl called Su Lizhen, played by Wong Kar Wai regular, Maggie Cheung in a "typical" role. The second is a ballsy show-girl called Leung Fung-Ying, played brilliantly by Carina Lau. Possibly a third is Yuddy's controlling, intimidating, ex-whore mother (Rebecca Pan). In some ways, she is the most interesting character, given her decision to cruelly reveal to Yuddy that she is actually his adoptive mother, and that his real mother is living in the Philippines.

In contrast to Yuddy, Wong Kar Wai presents one of his classic policeman characters. Andy Lau plays a decent neighbourhood copper, who comes across Su Lizhen stalking Yuddy's apartment. He takes pity on her, and is so emotionally affected by their encounters that he leaves Hong Kong for the Philippines. There he will come across Yuddy, who is now searching for his birth-mother.

DAYS OF BEING WILD is far from a masterpiece and viewers not familiar with Wong Kar Wai's patient mood pieces may be frustrated by its longueurs. However, it's a rewarding film for fans not least because it takes us further on the journey to the most perfect expression of Wong Kar Wai's style - IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE - a movie presaged by the brief, irrelevant and yet lovely little cameo of Tony Leung at the end of the film.

DAYS OF BEING WILD played Berlin and Toronto 1991 and was released that year. It is available on DVD.

Wong Kar Wai retrospective - AS TEARS GO BY/WONG GOK KA MOON

AS TEARS GO BY sees Wong Kar Wai's essentially romantic, fanciful nature shoe-horned into a conventional Hong Kong traid movie, reminiscent of MEAN STREETS. The result is a movie that is occasionally surprising but which has dated badly. Indeed, to modern eyes, it can sometimes feel like a pastiche. Having said all that, the movie opens in classic WKW territory. We're in a cramped flat in Kowloon and a young man (Andy Lau of INFERNAL AFFAIRS fame) is about to fall in love with a woman he has barely met. Instead of the femmes fatales of later flms, AS TEARS GO BY features a young Maggie Cheung as a milk-sop provincial who simpers in a hugely under-powered role. Naturally, this new relationship will force Brother Wah to reconsider his future as a gangster. It doesn't take much: he was already getting tired of bailing out his volatile, useless side-kick, Fly (classic Joe Pesci territory).

The movie oozes eighties stylings. There's a deeply annoying synthesizer sound-track; everyone looks like they trying to be extras in TOP GUN; the plot is pretty conventional and the denouement utterly unsurprising. Jacky Cheung over-acts horribly as Fly and Andy Lay isn't given a chance to display the talent he shows in INFERNAL AFFAIRS. So, pretty much the only reason to watch this film is to trace out the developing style of Wong Kar Wai. We can see it in superficial things like the use of cheesy songs and stroboscopic photography from DP Wai-Keung Lau. But we can see it in the substance of the film and the scenes that sit around the obligatory set-piece action sequences: lovers are thwarted and romantic life is squeezed between the petty obligations of real life.

AS TEARS GO BY was originally released in 1988 and played Toronto 1989. It is available on DVD.

*Thanks to the old lag, Berko, for clueing me in to the correct terminology for this maddening effect that so marred my enjoyment of MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS.

INFERNAL AFFAIRS/MOU GAAN DOU - untouchably brilliant Hong Kong thriller

I'm writing a review of INFERNAL AFFAIRS to get the movie out of my system before writing up the Martin Scorsese remake, THE DEPARTED. Like most people in Europe, I saw INFERNAL AFFAIRS on DVD rather than at the cinema, and it impressed me as one of the most genuinely mind-bending thrillers I had ever seen. The set-up is simple. The Hong Kong triads plant a young mole, played by the director Andy Lau, in the Hong Kong police department. The police do the same, getting a guy played by the superlative actor Tony Leung (2046 & IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) to infiltrate the triads. Over time these men achieve success in the new roles, earning the respect and camaraderie of their new "friends". So, when each organisation suspects it has become infiltrated, each man has to ask himself who he really is and to whom his loyalty lies. It's a conventional thriller - will they be uncovered? - but it's also a remarkably thoughtful and emotional movie.

Very emotional. Tony Leung is the absolutely perfect actor for the role of the cop turned thug. He has a screen presence that invites you to empathise with him. His situation is truly hellish - he can see that he is a good crook but he wants to get back to "reality". Only a couple of cops know his true identity and he is reliant on them to bring him back. He becomes increasingly desperate, realising that his boss has little incentive to bring in his best source of information on the enemy. Like all pawns through history - the movie references Rome - Leung is an increasingly unwilling sacrificial lamb. Andy Lau's character is a different kettle of fish. Lau is a big action star in Hong Kong and he plays this role with the cool of Schumacher. He is expert at keeping things hovering just above the surface - an expertise that neuters his ability to have a serious emotional connection with his girlfriend.

What else can I say about this movie? The cinematography has a harsh, unsettling feel - all muted, drained colours and clever inter-cutting. Christopher Doyle - the best cinematographer currently working - was the visual consultant and it shows. But perhaps the real success of the film is down to the fact that Andy Lau also photographed, scripted, directed and starred in the movie. Perhaps what we are benefiting from is the single-minded vision of one man seen through to the end with no compromise?

All in all, for me, INFERNAL AFFAIRS redefined how much you could do with crime thriller genre - it broke the boundaries. It's one of those rare films where you just can't find any fault with it - like Dr STRANGELOVE or IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. If you haven't seen it, you should DEFINITELY check it out, preferably before seeing the Scorsese remake.

INFERNAL AFFAIRS was released in Hong Kong in 2002 and opened in the UK and US in 2004. It is available on DVD.