I did say I’d review this trilogy a while back, so here it is, me being my usual rushed and brain-dead self will give it my best shot else it’ll be yet another draft of about 20-odd.
I also figured I’d best stick to things non-politics related as pop-culture, entertainment is my more specialised somewhat area with regards to my writing (not blogging). Politics is just something that I feel passionately about from time to time but honestly know sweet FA about.
FYI: Of course I’m pissed off about the Sharif brothers but then the golden question is how will it affect the real priorities at hand? Not much, right? So relax, don’t do it, spare us from the frenzies please. Ahan, AZ is a bee-atch, but whatever. And no, It’s not because I’m thrown off-course and dumbfounded, it’s because I’m finally coming clean, I don’t have the foggiest about siyasat. Did I have you fooled or did you know all along? Hah!
Anyway the trilogy in question is Wong Kar-Wai’s trio of films; Days of being wild/In the mood for love/2046 and in that order. Here’s where I shoutout to Ali: Thanks for sending me this Youtube clip eons ago, and sparking my obsession with this director. And another shoutout to my younger brother who like the rest of us siblings grew up off eastern martial arts films and he kind of kept an avid interest in the Hong Kong movie scene, who filled me in on the rest of WKW’s work.
And just so you know, these are far from martial arts-related films. Their genre is romance and drama – minus the cheese and chick-flick factor, ok, I’ll admit it falls under ”art film” genre, but that sounds too posh for me.
The funny thing it’s little known that these three films are a trilogy, they can be watched as stand-alones as they are so different in format and the character focus varies, but, it is a trilogy, and watching all three in their order is the complete story, following the protagonists from their innocent teens to decades later.
This is also the same for Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, they are a duology but they’re rarely marketed that way although I wouldn’t recommend them two. They can be pretty charming, sweet and funny but a huge portion of them, especially concentrated in Fallen Angels (self explanatory there) is rather strange and seedy. Sorry to sound like a prude but it’s not my cup of tea.
Onto the main bits:
Days of Being Wild:
Obviously I’ll istart with the first portion of the story, the film was made in the late eighties but the story’s set in the ’50s.
In this we see Maggie Cheung’s character So-Lai as a shy, reserved girl working lonely night shifts at a run-down diner where one day a handsome stranger (Leslie Cheung) shows up, who simply approaches her in an unusual manner saying ”tonight you’ll see me in your dreams”. ”What an obnoxious DICK *honk*!” is the typical response any self-respecting female’s mind will elicit. So-Lai has an innocence about her but she’s thankfully defiant and thus makes sure she stays awake all night so as not to dream of this obnoxious *loud-honk*. He starts frequenting every night and eventually his strange, gentle ways intigue her, thus lure her in. No sooner has he got her where he wanted, he’s out of her life, never to look back. We follow Cheung as he ropes in his next victim (Carina Lau) in an equally intriguing way. During this ensnaring process, a homeless, desolate So-Lai turns up at his door unexpectedly. He’s a cold, heartless prick and turns her out into the street on a rainy night. So-Lai still upholds some level of dignity though (bless) and with the help of a police officer on duty that night she gets by fine. The focus then shifts onto this handsome police officer and his inward sympathy for the girl. A nice callback here to an earlier WKW flick ‘As tears go by’ where the cop (played by Andy Lau) and actress Maggie Cheung (So-Lai here) are cast as a tres sweet couple.
You do begin to understand mr playboy eventually though, he has a complex, an innate hatred towards his own mother for abandoning him as a child and is obsessed with returning to his native Vietnam, to locate his mother. His second victim Lau is less dignified than So-Lai when he leaves her, and she manages to pull off a mega emotion-charged performance in the film, which garnered her some accolades, she was bloody marvellous in a couple of scenes I must add.
In an unusual twist you do see playboy and police officer in an awesome suspense-action sequence in Vietnam, they’re both completely unaware of the fact they are the same people on that rainy night when So-Lai came to visit and each of them hold brief but memorable encounters with her, in common.
You don’t see a certain key character Tony Leung (character name: Chow) until towards the very end of the film and his role is quite detached to the rest of the story but still, it sets the scene for its sequel.
Here’s a better review.
In the mood for love:
The sequel and most popular film of the three.
The two protagonists here are Chow (Leung) and So-Lai (Maggie Cheung). Chow and So-Lai are married, but not to each other. The two married couples move into a set of apartments, they’re neighbours. Chow and So-Lai are thrown together in this film when they figure out their partners are cheating on them, Chow’s wife is having an affair with So-Lai’s husband. The latter duo are absent in this film and when they do very briefly feature in the film their faces are hidden, all focus is on Chow and So-Lai.
Both leads are obviously not happy with the deceit and start spending a lot of time plotting how they will approach their respective partners about this discovery.
Eventually you begin noticing tiny signs of attraction between both characters, who appear extremely platonic on the surface.
Yes, I think the storyline was pretty predictable but the ending was really beautiful, and certainly not cliched. In fact nothing in this film is cliched but the storyline. The cinematography, the acting (So-Lai’s innocence is unflinching), the soundtrack, the fact that you never see them really do much (they hardly even hold hands), but yet there’s a sense of mystery in the air… Just watch it, and you’ll see what I mean. Don’t go off some promotional images for this film, they mislead.
Again, a better review can be found here.
2046:
This is the final installment and OMG!The other two were sublime in a very WKW style but this, oh my, REALLY crazy subliminal and I love it. However unlike the other two ‘PG friendlies’, there are a few ‘adult’ scenes in this but that shouldn’t put you off (just skip the scenes), for the pros far, far, far outweigh the cons in this beauty.
The story picks up where it left us in ITMFL. But there’s no So-Lai, Instead you get three new leads and a re-appearance by Carina Lau (the girl in DOBW, remember?). The three new female leads are Gong Li (’Memoirs of a Geisha’, ‘Miami Vice’), Faye Wong (my favourite HK actress after Maggie Cheung) and Zhang Zhiyi (of ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’, ‘Crouching Tiger’ fame). All three actresses are in top form.
Chow isn’t the same Chow of the previous two films. Here he becomes a playboy akin to our favourite Vietnamese one. A complete prick, though he is the coldest to Zhang Zhiyi’s character (though she deserves it, don’t really like her in this). First up we have Gong Li who he meets in Singapore. She is a notorious and skilled gambler known as ‘The Black Spider”, her real name is So-Lai which is what draws Chow to her. Upn returning to Hong Kong he goes back to the old apartment blocks of the previous film, hoping to rent out room no. 2046. The same room So-Lai used to inhabit. His timing means he can’t rent it, so instead takes up residence in 2047, his old apartment. Zhang Zhiyi’s character it turns out is his neighbour, and she’s a call girl. The two start a relationship but a tempestuous and meaningless one.
Then the landlord’s two daughters come back home, re-joinging their father, the eldest of the two is Faye Wong’s character. Chow’s interest is piqued but he can’t make a move as she already belongs to someone else; A Japanese (gorgeous, gorgeous) fellow who her dad will never accept. Her retarded, lovelorn behaviour just breaks my heart, and Chow’s. The two form a union as situations force Chow to stay locked up in his room, writing his columns and a book he has been working on for a while. Wong lends him her creativity and thus we have the story of a train numbered 2046, set in the year 2046, where lost love can be rekindled? In a strange twist however Chow’s voiceover tells us he is the protagonist in this book of his, with the face of Wong’s Japanese boyfriend and thus we are transported to the future. Where Wong is a lovelorn android. It’s brilliantly done.
Lau’s return in this film is an interesting callback to the first film, she suffers memory loss, and there’s a scene in a party where Chow in his playboy manner gets to her side and whispers in hr ear, a reference to a certain ”Vietnamese playboy”, and you see a tear roll down her cheek.
You have to wait until the very, very end where everything is finally explained and all scattered pieces of the story finally weave together and actually make sense. You’re left absolutely awestruck. I was just like ”aaaaawwww!!”.
Just so you know, the dearth of So-Lai the original in this film doesn’t mean her character dies, it’s just unfortunate that it’s difficult to locate her and you do see her in one of his daydream like visions.
I could easily see a fourth film here!
Yet again, a better review can be found here.
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ps. I highly recommend As Tears Go By, by the same director, honestly it’s brilliant. That and this trilogy. Like me, you too will become hooked.
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