O Cinema de Wong Kar-Wai

 O Cinema de Wong Kar-Wai

Last September, I reviewed the DVD set “Cinema Yakuza Volume 1,” which was released by Brazilian niche distributor Versátil Home Video. This year, they released a number of nifty sets for Asian movie collectors, including “Sci-Fi Japonesa Vol. 3”; “Obras Primas de Terror: Terror Asiático Volume 2”; and “Cinema Policial: Hong Kong.” Among these sets was “O Cinema de Wong Kar-Wai,” which compiled some of his films, which had previously been released on individual discs in the 2000s by Wonder Media/Continental. Those are out of print, but you can still find some of them for about R$ 40 (about 8 dollars) per film. This one cost me R$ 100, which ended up being a bargain compared to the older discs.

As Tears Go By (Hong Kong, 1988: Wong Kar-Wai) - So far, I have only seen Ashes of Time (the original cut) and The Grandmaster as far as Wong Kar-Wai films are concerned. I recently purchased a Brazilian set of his films and will be working my way through it over the course of these next few weeks. I'll watch them in order, so I'm starting off with this one. There isn't a real plot per se. It's mainly about the travails of low-level Triad Wah (Andy Lau) as he has to deal with fallout of the actions of his impulsive and hot-headed dai-dai Fly (Jackie Cheung, in the sort of unhinged performance that would serve him well later in Bullet in the Head). Most of these problems have to do with another Triad, Tony (Alex Man), to whom Fly owes money. At the same time, Wah finds himself developing feelings for his (second?) cousin Ngor (Maggie Cheung), who has come to his flat from the sticks (Lantau Island) for a few nights seeking medical treatment.

The film goes back and forth between the three leads. At one point, Fly becomes such a liability that Wah encourages him to get a real job as a street vendor in order to stay out of trouble. Of course, Fly is not able to stay on the straight and narrow for long--it doesn't help that Tony is a douchebag. Near the end, it feels like that Wah may be willing to tone down his Triad activities in order to stay with Ngor, but when Fly volunteers to carry out a hit against a stoolie, Wah has to choose between love and brotherhood. I'm guessing this is a Wong Kar-Wai thing (or an arthouse director thing), but there are lots of quiet scenes of people smoking cigarettes and staring off into the distance.

Some people label this a Heroic Bloodshed film, and it does have three action directors--Stephen Tung Wai (who helped invent the Bullet Ballet), Poon Kin-Kwan, and Benz Kong--but there really isn't much action aside from a few Triad beatings and a brief shootout at the end. My favorite scene comes right before the climax where Fly has a final confrontation with Tony. It is actually a very intelligent moment for an otherwise irresponsible nutjob, as he leverages his temporary "Triad Hero" status to destroy his adversary's credibility. A lot of people also enjoy phone booth kissing scene, set to the Cantonese version of "Take My Breath Away." The direction is good, the performances are good, and I like Andrew Lau as a cinematographer more than I do as a director. But beyond that, I'm guessing that contemplative dramas are not really my cup of tea.

DVD Extras - "Extended" ending - Not really different from the one we got. "Happy" ending - Probably for the Malaysian and Singaporean markets, which dictated that films about criminals (and vigilantes) should end with them answering to the law and going to jail.

Days of Being Wild (Hong Kong, 1990: Wong Kar-Wai) - Wong Kar-Wai's sophomore effort is a (very) leisurely-paced character drama set in Hong Kong in the early 1960s. Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) is something of a womanizer, the sort who will seduce anyone who catches his eye, but will casually move on to the next, even after the femme-du-jour has fallen for him. When we meet him, he's doing just that to a young woman, Sou Lai-Zan (Maggie Cheung), who works in a snack bar. He discards her when she asks to move in with him, moving onto a dancer named Leung Fung-Ying (Carina Lau). Leung is determined to make an honest man out of him, however. Sou Lai-Zan vents her feelings to a lowly policeman working the graveyard shift, played by Andy Lau. We learn that Yuddy was raised by a prostitute (Rebecca Pan), who refuses to tell him who his birth mother is, leading to a toxic tug-of-war between them. Yuddy eventually goes to the Philippines in search of his mother. 

There isn't much of a narrative. It's mainly characters meeting and interacting. The film is mainly a tour-de-force for Leslie Cheung, who is really good at playing a prick. Andy Lau and Jackie Cheung, who plays Yuddy's friend, play their roles the complete opposite of their characters in As Tears Go By. Jackie's character is essentially a Beta Simp. A nice one, but a simp nonetheless. The actresses acquit themselves well; both Carina Lau and Rebecca Pan were nominated for Hong Kong Film Awards. There is a brief outburst of violence at the end, which is out of step with the rest of the film. And like most Wong Kar-Wai films, there is talk of memories and forgetting things and that sort of thing.

Chungking Express (Hong Kong, 1994: Wong Kar-Wai) - So, I finally watched this. It sat in front of me at Blockbuster Video on the corner of Pershing and Robinhood in Stockton, CA for years, but I was too interested in renting The Killer and Hard Boiled for the upteenth time. I think I would not have appreciated it back then, so maybe it's better I saw it now.

Like the other Wong Kar-Wai dramas I've seen over the past couple of weeks, this is more of a character interaction film than something with a standard beginning-middle-end narrative. The first story involves a brief meeting between a lovelorn cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and a female criminal (Brigitte Lin), who uses Indian immigrants as means of transporting heroin. Then there's the meat of the film: a beat cop (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) and the quirky fast food clerk (Faye Wong) who becomes (non-violently) obsessed with him.

Although Tony Leung won a HKFA award for Best Actor for this film, the real praise goes to Faye Wong, who simply magnetic in her role. The way she moves her body as she listens to LOUD music at the restaurant and interacts with Tony and her co-workers is hypnotic. And it's not even in a sexual way. She has a quirky air about her that is just fascinating. I honestly just loved watching her mill about Tony's apartment (played by Christopher Doyle's apartment) and do random stuff. I loved the scene where Tony was half-heartedly looking for his ex in the pad while Faye was hiding from him, often in plain sight. The entire sequence makes me wonder if it's a commentary on modern women being more attracted to the "idea of men" than men themselves. And now I can't get "California Dreamin'" out of my head. Thanks, movie.

Scott Hamilton, one-half of the duo that was Stomp Tokyo (a popular B-movie review site in the late 1990s and early 2000s), one (facetiously) pointed out in his blog ("My God, It's Full of Nerds") that Wong Kar-Wai movies often come across as the origins of a serial killer. He mentioned in a post about My Blueberry Nights that Jude Law's character had a lonely routine of closing his bar, collecting misplaced keys and putting them in a jar, and watching security footage of his patrons from that evening. He said that "taking home a prostitute and murdering her" almost felt like the next logical step.

I got that vibe from both Takeshi Kaneshiro's and Faye Wong's characters. With the former, had he not gotten the birthday message from Brigitte Lin, one can (humorously) imagine him going off the deep end and stalking women in Tsim Sha Tsui and murdering them (starting with his unseen ex and then the girl at the fast food place), especially after all that obsessive business with the pineapple. The same goes for Faye Wong: if she had never gotten found out, you can (once again, humorously) imagine her obsession growing to the point that she would start stalking and stabbing flight attendants* to avenge her man (or her idealized idea of him).


* - And for the record, Faye looked hot in a flight attendant outfit.

Fallen Angels (Hong Kong, 1995: Wong Kar-Wai) - WKW's follow-up to Chungking Express originally started life as a proposed to third story to that film, although I'm guessing that the Tony Leung/Faye Wong segment from the earlier movie took on a life of its own and this was one was left on the chopping block. The two films are a bit similar while being completely different from each other. On one hand, both films are set in and around Tsim Sha Tsui and have scenes set in Chungking Mansions and the show the Midnight Express restaurant. Moreover, there is a recurring theme involving Takeshi Kaneshiro and canned pineapple, although his character here at an expired can and has to pay the price (in Chungking Express, he ate them before the expiration date).

The film is a series of interconnected tales of emotionally-isolated (and downright kooky) people living among the dregs of society. One of them involves a hitman (Leon Lai, of Seven Swords and Bullets of Love) and his assistant (Michelle Reis, of Fong Sai Yuk and Swordsman II) and the latter's obsession for the former, despite never having formally met him. Her job is to stake out the locales where he is to perform hits and fax layouts over to him, in addition to keep his base of operations clean whenever he's not around. She yearns for him, but their professional relationship prevents them from having any sort of personal contact. He eventually falls in with a manic pixie girl, played by Karen Mok (Black Mask and God of Cookery) with blonde hair. However, unlike Faye Wong's adorable character, Mok's character is 90% manic and only 10% pixie, if you catch my drift.

There is also a mute kid (Kaneshiro, of Hero and House of Flying Daggers) who prowls the streets at night, opening businesses and forcing his fellow nightcrawlers to buy his services. He falls in with a wack-job, Charlie (Charlie Yeung, of High Risk and New Police Story), who is jealous that an old boyfriend has moved on.

The film is often criticized for being so emotionally distant and an exercise in camera work experimentation more than a compelling narrative. I can see that. There is some gunplay in it, staged by Poon Kin-Kwan (Dragon Chronicles - Maidens of Heavenly Mountain and Return to a Better Tomorrow), but nothing special. As with most WKW films, this is more about the visuals and acting and less about plot and action.

The best performances in my opinion belong to Takeshi Kaneshiro and Charlie Yeung. The latter was especially interesting because her character was so delusional in her first scenes that I had a hard time watching her, but her performance was so good (such a far cry from her squeaky-clean character in New Police Story) that I couldn't look away. The same goes for Michelle Reis, playing a 180º opposite of her proper and dutiful wife of Jet Li in the Fong Sai Yuk films. She is not the most relatable, but it's Michelle Reis in tight black leather and fishnet stockings playing with herself on a couple of occasions. That alone is worth the price of admission.