Minute hands spin endlessly as audiences plunge through layers of vivid dreamscapes that don’t abide by the normal laws of time. The concept of it seems to cease existing entirely within the incendiary films of Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai, only returning to help love pass us by.
Setting the screen ablaze since his debut in the late ’80s, Wong’s keen sense for how love and time intertwine to form life articulates itself through a bountiful toolbox of stylistic flair. From directing without a full-fledged script, to his ethereal step-printing technique — and even those suave sunglasses of his — Wong’s ability to inject style is something which cannot be taught.
One of the ways this is consistently accomplished is by way of the seemingly inescapable smoke clouds that roll around with his roster of lovelorn loners. Usually drifting between odd jobs and casual sex, his characters are troubled by commitment and notions of purpose. They sometimes anchor themselves within those chaotic dilemmas by smoking cigarettes, treating them as a type of life raft; one which those who float adrift can return to. Capturing the essence of ’90s Hong Kong with his untouchable run from the late ’80s to the early aughts, Wong’s cigarettes are more than just tobacco and nicotine: they’re part of what immortalized the fashion, music, lights, colors, places, and people in these films forever.
As Tears Go By (1988): 00:54:13
In this first scene, Ngor (Maggie Cheung) and her cousin Wah (Andy Lau) bask in the afterglow of their dramatic phone booth smoochathon, playing coy with one another. Wah smokes out of habit, but it reminds us of his unforgiving life of crime as a triad in the city: something this budding relationship has helped him escape, albeit temporarily. The universe tempts him with this better life, dangling it only a train ride away, but his conceited brother (Jackie Cheung) keeps pulling him back to the underworld.
As Tears Go By announced Wong’s wholly unique voice: blending Hong Kong’s trademark ’80s action cinema with the director’s specific brand of unrequited romance. Equally as important, the film also launched the dramatic career of A-list style icon Maggie Cheung’s. After being “typecast in the roles of comics, or weak, clumsy women” following her breakout part in Jackie Chan’s Police Story (1985), As Tears Go By was the jumping off point for Cheung to work with festival circuit mainstays like Stanley Kwan and Olivier Assayas. Starring in films like Center Stage (1991), Irma Vep (1996), and In the Mood for Love (2000), Cheung went on to cement herself as one of Hong Kong’s most famous actresses overseas.
Days of Being Wild (1990): 01:04:36
Near Days of Being Wild’s close, Carina Lau’s character has an intimate, near-fourth-wall-break with the audience right before barging into a climactic dressing room tantrum. She looks away from the scene, exhausted from chasing down Yuddy’s (Leslie Cheung) whereabouts, and takes a last drag to gather herself before encountering what she knows will be the truth of their fling’s finality. A loosely formed journey down the road of abandonment, the film chronicles Yuddy’s tumultuous relationships leading up to the search for his biological mother in the Philippines.
Dipping the celluloid in an ambivalence-filled emerald green, Wong’s sophomore film commemorated the director’s first joint effort with longtime cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who’s equally to credit for creating the duo’s avant-garde camera style. Using the poetics of light and color, this scene can be looked at as a foretelling of the recurring modern expressionist aesthetic that would become a defining characteristic throughout the rest of Wong’s oeuvre.
Chungking Express (1994): 01:19:40
Cop 663 (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Faye (Faye Wong) simmer in the comfort of each other’s company, not yet arriving at the climax of Faye’s voyeuristic forays into the heartbroken policeman’s apartment. The space is any city-dweller’s dream. With the adjacent moving walkway barely an arm’s length away from the window, the undefinable energy of Hong Kong seems to impose itself upon the pair. Yet, they couldn’t seem to care less about it.
Chungking Express’s two-pronged story wades into that peculiar sadness that accompanies one-sided love through the eyes of two policemen whose love lifes have recently expired. While Wong certainly wasn’t the first director to tap into the rich details of cityscapes, he certainly carved out a singular point in time and space within the rapidly transforming global city of Hong Kong, transporting viewers into the sensory-overload of missed and made chances that move a million-miles-a-minute within the blocks of a concrete jungle.
Fallen Angels (1995): 00:15:37
The only reason this pick isn’t the soaring Cross-Harbour Tunnel motorcycle ride is because Michelle Reis’ performance is what holds the spread out ambitions of Fallen Angels together, and it seems to have gone underappreciated despite being the most exciting aspect of the film. Hiding behind the veil of her low-drawn bangs, she emanates star-power, stalking around the neon night of Hong Kong as she blocks the choreography for her partner’s (Leon Lai) assassinations. In this scene, Reis props herself up on the fluorescent tubes of a bubbler jukebox, burning one as she soaks up the machine’s red and yellow halos.
Told in another diptych, this dazzling and unruly entry into Wong’s filmography taps the same vein of unreturned love, recounting the charged partnership between a hitman and his deputy; a storyline that ends up dovetailing into the remains of a separate bittersweet father-son relationship. Set to the foreboding synths and dark cantations of Laurie Anderson’s “Speak My Language,” this scene — along with pretty much all of Wong’s other needle drops — clears a space in the recesses of one’s mind, impossible to be forgotten. Wong’s music choices bridge the gap between what’s left unspoken by characters and audience understanding, utilizing music in a way that can only be expressed by experiencing it. Moments like these where Wong’s style sings on all fronts visual and auditory have imprinted themselves forever on contemporary filmmaking, echoing in the works of directors like Barry Jenkins, Isabel Sandoval, and Xavier Dolan.
Happy Together (1997): 00:09:46
Lai Yiu-fai (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Ho Po-wing’s (Leslie Cheung) dream of Iguazú ultimately ends in their fall, but Happy Together’s dam-breaking ending only loads its prior events with more power and meaning. Perhaps it is most visible around the 10 minute mark, when Ho rides off with a client in the back of a taxi, leaving Lai behind at the tango bar to wonder whether love is worth loving. Cheung’s expressions cycle between apathy and longing just as their relationship cycles between euphoric and abusive. The whole film revolves around instances, such as these, of futile affection. Lai and Ho have immigrated to Buenos Aires to find a different life outside of Hong Kong (the film was intentionally released the same year as the handover of Hong Kong), putting off their complicated relationship with their home country while mournfully flaying each other’s hearts.
In the scene, Ho dons a slick checkered blazer, and lights a fresh cigarette as he turns to look out the back window, saying what can’t be said: he wants to start over. Similar to that of Woodcock and Alma’s relationship in Phantom Thread, the sun only shines on Lai and Ho’s relationship in times of illness; when one half unabashedly needs the other. So they start over, and over. Reigniting a doomed relationship for the infinitieth time isn’t something people do for fun though, it’s to hold onto a memory. And perhaps these vain attempts at a relationship are Lai and Ho’s last ditch-efforts to hold onto their memories of pre-1997 Hong Kong. Like their dependency on nicotine, they rely on the drug of love to make all of the struggle worth something. A burst of serotonin that gives momentary refuge from the confusion of a constantly changing world.
In the Mood for Love (2000): 01:22:55
Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) and Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) have their facade of structured life shattered when they discover their spouses having an affair with each other, leading the two everywhere but to each other. In the Mood for Love boasts an endless amount of painterly compositions and stunning production design to depict 1960s Hong Kong, but Cheung’s elegant wardrobe of cheongsams might be what catches the eye most intensely.
The swooning and aching feelings this film conjures can soften even the most jaded spectators, robust with enrapturing imagery and fashion. Out of the film’s 24 cheongsams, this sky blue one is up there with the best, adorned with a gilded lichen around its neck. It appears near the conclusion of the film’s agonizing edging (let’s call things what they are) relationship, and also happens to be the one and only time Cheung’s character smokes. She secretly enters Chow’s Singapore apartment, years after their first meeting, and leaves a half-smoked, red filtered stub in his ashtray; like a love letter with no return address.
2046 (2004): 00:27:28
A lonely journalist spends most of his time in the fantasy world of a somewhat popular android erotica column, writing real-world lovers and situations into Wong’s only venture thus far into the sci-fi genre. Even though it took over four years to get the film out of its production phase, 2046 is Wong’s most exciting experiment to date, as the director tailored his arsenal of stylistic conventions to the confines of a new genre. This scene in particular finds the fictional android version of Wang Jing-wen (Faye Wong) shooting off three streams of smoke while bleeding circular orbs of light harken back to the crimson-curtained hallway of In the Mood for Love (the loosely linked prequel to 2046).
Though unfortunately relegated to this more supporting role in 2046, Faye Wong’s initial casting a decade before in Chungking Express sent Cantopop fans into a craze as the star had yet to grace the silver screen with her slightly unhinged charm. In this tendency to cast popular singer-actors (Leslie Cheung, Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung), we find a variable of Wong’s secret formula that not only adds the star-power needed to appeal to studio executive’s pockets, but also adds another element of spontaneity to turn poetic visuals and music into a wholly distinct form of cinema.
Never before available to international audiences in this capacity, the release of this slick new Criterion box set is a more than justifiable excuse to look in awe at some absurdly good-looking people who somehow manage to look even cooler puffing clouds in pristine 4K resolution.
