Consisting of three critical essays and an extended interview with the filmmaker, the Editions Dis Voir publication Wong Kar-wai provides an evocative, thoughtful, and articulate introductory framework into the signature aesthetics and recurring themes of Wong’s cinema. In the overview essay Images from the Inside, Jean-Marc Lalanne equates Wong’s films to the disintegrating, abstract remnants […]
Almost ten years ago, Time Magazine had featured an article of ten great international films from the late 80s to early 90s that had (up to the publishing date) not been released in the U.S. There were two films on the list that were also very high on my wish list: Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue and […]
In an early episode in 2046, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) – the international correspondent and aspiring wuxia novelist of Wong’s preceding film, In the Mood for Love (and now a struggling journalist and pulp writer of erotic serials) encounters a former acquaintance from Singapore named Lulu (Carina Lau) at a seedy nightclub on Christmas Eve, […]
There is a recurrent sound of a sensual waltz that accompanies each encounter between Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) as they invariably cross paths in a crowded residential complex: the first is a polite glance as Mo-Wan leaves the room of a friendly card game; and then during the subsequent encounters […]
A handsome young man named Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) stops by a stadium concession stand to buy a soft drink. He approaches the shy, beautiful store attendant and catches her attention by correctly guessing her name as Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung), and confidently predicts that she will see him in her dreams. One afternoon, he asks […]
The film opens to a symbolic shot of Wah lying obscured beneath a blanket that is half cast in shadow on a sunny late spring afternoon as he is rudely awakened by the repeated telephone calls of a persistent, overly familiar aunt. Explaining that a distant cousin named Ah-Ngor (Maggie Cheung) has gone to the […]