DAYS OF BEING WILD (wri & dir by Wong Kar Wai, cinematography by Christopher Doyle, w/Leslie Cheung, Carina Lau, Maggie Cheung, Hong Kong, 94mns, 1990)
DAYS OF BEING WILD (wri & dir by Wong Kar Wai, cinematography by Christopher Doyle, w/Leslie Cheung, Carina Lau, Maggie Cheung, Hong Kong, 94mns, 1990)
*Part of Secret Movie Club's Top 1000. A ridiculous number we know. But there are easily 1000 must see movies in cinema. Probably many of thousands. But this number feels right to us.
We've written about Wong Kar Wai's full "Love" trilogy (DAYS OF BEING WILD, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, 2046) in our IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE review. Today, we want to focus in on just the first movie (which is also our personal favorite) DAYS OF BEING WILD.
DAYS OF BEING WILD was, in many ways, the movie that launched Wong Kar Wai on the international cinema scene. Only his second film as director, DAYS bears all the hallmarks of Kar-Wai's mature style-only with zero affectation or mannerism.
Once CHUNGKING EXPRESS and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE exploded like firecrackers on cinema screens everywhere, Kar Wai started to chase his own style in a way. This still produced stone cold classics-2046, HAPPY TOGETHER, GRANDMASTER.
But DAYS is like Scorsese's MEAN STREETS or Spielberg's DUEL or Jordan Peele's GET OUT or Sophia Coppola's LOST IN TRANSLATION-that is full expressive works before the directors became known quantities themselves.
And this may be why, for this writer at least, DAYS is the most exhilarating Kar-Wai work. A gem among gems. Most beautiful because of its flaws and imperfections.
DAYS tells the story of mercurial, explosive Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) who romances incredible sincere single working class Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) then just as abruptly disappears.
Days of Being Wild is both a look at fleeting romances and of lifelong searches…
He's got a complicated background including the discovery that his mother is only his adoptive mother and his real mother lives in the Philippines.
In some ways, Yuddy meets his match when he starts a relationship with brassy showgirl Mimi/Lulu (Carina Lau). She is as much a force of nature as Yuddy is and their sex life is as explosive as their relationship.
Like CHUNGKING EXPRESS and 2046, DAYS has a kind of musical dance structure where multiple characters have moments narrating, telling the story from their point of view. Different characters fall in/out of love with other characters. Everything is very messy. Nothing is easily tied up.
Tony Leung even shows up in the final moments of the movie for a sequence meant to set up a movie that was never shot as intended...
BUT became IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE and 2046 in fascinating ways. And it is many of these characters here who will reappear in the next two movies of the trilogy continuing the dance of love.
It seems the painful task of the artist is to progress their artistry to the point where they can return to the beginning and repeatedly forget all outside triumph and disaster and relearn and reinvent cinema each time out-paradoxically with the growing toolbox they've acquired.
DAYS OF BEING WILD is such a stunning youthful movie full of passion, passionate performances, passionate ideas.
The start of Wong Kar Wai’s ability to craft achingly beautiful moments, shots, scenes…
The sequence where Yuddy and Mimi come home for the first time in the rain, flirt and yell at each other, and end up kissing before an incredible 2001/LAWRENCE OF ARABIA type cut to them dancing after sex is one of the most exciting scenes of sexual romance this writer has ever seen.
Christopher Doyle's cinematography is all searching for expression and no artifice. In fact, all the external obsession Kar-Wai and collaborators will later pour on costumes, hair, production design, color feels like just gleeful exploration here.
Emotion and not manners. Expressionism and not mannerism.
But even more important, DAYS tells the most important story in the world-the search for meaning, connection, transcendence. And the near impossibility of achieving any of it.
If we're lucky, we have momentary bits of grace where we achieve some kind of understanding for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, a few days.
The moment at midnight while the rain pours outside when a kiss really becomes a kiss.
The moment, as painful as it is, when we realize who our true love really was. And how we blew it.
Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club