Days of Being Wild - A Wong Kar Wai Film

Starring Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau

Nov 1, 2009

Days of Being Wild, Wong Kar-Wai's second film as a director sees him developing his considerable style and a recurring interest in the subject of unrequited love.

In 1988 Wong Kar-Wai directed his first feature film As Tears Go By. A straightforward genre piece loosely based on Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets it starred Andy Lau (Infernal Affairs) as a young Triad trying to keep his hothead cousin out of trouble, while romancing a troubled young woman. There were elements present in As Tears Go By that would become part of the director’s trademark style, but they were roughly drawn.

Days of Being Wild goes further and is recognisably a step away from genre and towards a different kind of sensibility. Kar-Wai’s films are mood pieces, reliant on stunning cinematography and using music in a particular way. Western pop songs are mixed with traditional ballads. Sometimes these tracks are non-diagetic, but more often than not they are part of the film and are heard in the background playing on radios or jukeboxes.

Days of Being Wild was pre-sold to cinema chains on the strength of its cast. Leslie Cheung was hot property having appeared alongside Chow Yun Fat in A Better Tomorrow (John Woo 1987) and starred in A Chinese Ghost Story (Sui-Tung Ching 1987). Kar-Wai also brought in his leading actors, from As Tears Go By, Andy Lau and Maggie Cheung. Cinema bosses weren’t best pleased when they got a downbeat tale of a callous young playboy undergoing an identity crisis.

Set in Hong Kong in 1960, the late Leslie Cheung stars as Yuddy, a handsome young man with a cold heart and lot of rage. Yuddy is from a wealthy background, but is living with his foster mother who refuses to give him information about his natural mother. A brief dalliance with a bargirl called Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung) leaves her bereft and prone to disconsolately hanging around outside Yuddy’s apartment.

Tide (Andy Lau), a street cop patrolling the area befriends Su Lizhen.They develop a tentative relationship, but while he is keen to take things further she is still pining after Yuddy. By the time she realises Tide might be a better option his ship has already sailed, literally as he quits the force and goes to work at sea.

It is easy to see why Days of Being Wild provoked some audiences to throw things at the screen when it first opened. It is an ambiguous film about romantic longing in which nobody gets what they want. Christopher Doyle's deliberately muted cinematography drains the screen of colour suggesting a depressive, claustrophobic air. Despite its failure at the box-office Days of Being Wild won huge critical praise and marked Wong Kar-Wai out as a major talent.

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