Days of Being WildA Film by Wong Kar Wai
Year ; 1990
Country : Hong Kong
Runtime:94 minutes
9th Oct 2011; 5.45pm
PERKS MINI THEATER
Perks School
With his second feature, Days of Being Wild (1990), Wong Kar Wai clearly established his own unique style of cinematic expression. A cult was born. The story is essentially a relentless visual examination of unrequited longing, missed connections, and loneliness, and the events presented are centered around the life of Yuddy York (Leslie Cheung), a self-centred playboy who takes pleasure in manipulating others.
A shy shop assistant Lizhen falls in love with him. But Yuddy is a moody, fickle man in a strange love-hate relationship with his foster mother (Rebecca Pan), an aging Hong Kong prostitute, and is obsessed with finding his real mother, a Filipino. He soon ditches Lizhen and, in his callous, serial way, takes up with the somewhat comical drama queen Leung Fung-Ying. Then he leaves her also to go o Philipaines to meet his mother.
Wong Kar-wai creates a spare and elegant film on chance, fate, and unrequited longing in Days of Being Wild. Using a meticulously crafted mise-en-scene of damp streets, soaking summer rains, green reflected city lights, and saturated blue hues of the evening sky, Wong creates a pervasive, melancholic atmosphere to reflect each characters' wandering and sense of incompletion.
Like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wong is a genius of artistic resourcefulness, making much out of spare locations. And like Fassbinder, he finds an elusive, painful humanity in these small, cramped places. This makes the emotions even more concentrated. Almost everything in "Days of Being Wild" is filmed in claustrophobic rooms, hallways or street corners.
There's a sort of no-budget, corralled intensity to everything. He tells much with a little. A few passing shots of palm trees and the presence of a single fan in one room, for example, are all he uses (and needs) to convey a permeating humidity and steaminess.
This sultriness is precisely the right atmosphere for the gorgeous matinee idols in the movie. Leslie Cheung suggests an Asian, sleepy-eyed Peter Sarsgaard, forever combing his hair in front of mirrors. And Maggie Cheung has an incredible porcelain-doll beauty, her hair falling continually over her face. You could watch faces like these doing anything.(Source - Internet)
Wong Kar-wai
Wong Kar-wai is undeniably an auteur of striking and salient cinema, standing apart from much mainstream Hong Kong cinema. Wong belongs to the mid-1980s Second New Wave of Hong Kong filmmakers who continued to develop the innovative and fresh aesthetic initiated by the original New Wave. The Second Wave, which includes directors such as Eddie Fong, Stanley Kwan and Clara Law.
After obtaining a diploma in graphic design from the Hong Kong Polytechnic School in 1980, Wong become a television production assistant. Following work on several television drama series, he began working as a scriptwriter for television and then later for films. Wong’s directorial debut As Tears Go By (1988) marked his unique visual style and was screened as part of the ‘Critics’ Week’ at the 1989 Cannes International Film Festival. Wong’s next film Days of Being Wild, which featured several of Hong Kong’s beautiful and popular young stars, won five Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Director.
His following effort, Ashes of Time (1994), varied greatly in genre, successfully subverting the conventions of the period martial-arts drama. During a break in the post-production of Ashes of Time, Wong made Chungking Express (1994), which later became a cult hit. Following this came Fallen Angels, which received considerable critical success when it was premiered at the 1995 Toronto Film Festival. In 1997, Happy Together premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it garnered a Best Director Award for Wong. In 2000, Wong’s In The Mood For Love was also awarded Cannes accolades, including Best Actor for Tony Leung Chiu-wai and the Technical Prize.
With In the Mood for Love, the focus centres on the jilted figures of Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk). Their isolation and longing is transformed into a melange of intersecting paths and poignantly shared moments in which the possibility of a soulful connection is entertained. Again, Wong’s arbitrary rhetoric finds expression in the poetic and brightly drenched tones of his unique filmic aesthetic, and his much-loved themes of loneliness, isolation, and longing rise to the surface. However, whilst In the Mood for Love incorporates all of his usual stylistic and thematic traits, it also ascends to a new level where the cultural significance of Wong’s setting is explored in greater detail.
(Source - Internet)
After obtaining a diploma in graphic design from the Hong Kong Polytechnic School in 1980, Wong become a television production assistant. Following work on several television drama series, he began working as a scriptwriter for television and then later for films. Wong’s directorial debut As Tears Go By (1988) marked his unique visual style and was screened as part of the ‘Critics’ Week’ at the 1989 Cannes International Film Festival. Wong’s next film Days of Being Wild, which featured several of Hong Kong’s beautiful and popular young stars, won five Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Director.
His following effort, Ashes of Time (1994), varied greatly in genre, successfully subverting the conventions of the period martial-arts drama. During a break in the post-production of Ashes of Time, Wong made Chungking Express (1994), which later became a cult hit. Following this came Fallen Angels, which received considerable critical success when it was premiered at the 1995 Toronto Film Festival. In 1997, Happy Together premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it garnered a Best Director Award for Wong. In 2000, Wong’s In The Mood For Love was also awarded Cannes accolades, including Best Actor for Tony Leung Chiu-wai and the Technical Prize.
With In the Mood for Love, the focus centres on the jilted figures of Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk). Their isolation and longing is transformed into a melange of intersecting paths and poignantly shared moments in which the possibility of a soulful connection is entertained. Again, Wong’s arbitrary rhetoric finds expression in the poetic and brightly drenched tones of his unique filmic aesthetic, and his much-loved themes of loneliness, isolation, and longing rise to the surface. However, whilst In the Mood for Love incorporates all of his usual stylistic and thematic traits, it also ascends to a new level where the cultural significance of Wong’s setting is explored in greater detail.
(Source - Internet)
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