How the cin­e­ma of Wong Kar-wai reflects a Hong Kong in transition

“Some­how every­thing comes with an expiry date. Sword­fish expires. Meat sauce expires. Even cling-film expires. Is there any­thing in the world which doesn’t?” Those lines of dopey con­tem­pla­tion come cour­tesy of the lovesick He Qiwu in Wong Kar-wai’s exu­ber­ant 1994 film Chungk­ing Express as the recent­ly dumped police offi­cer, like so many Wong pro­tag­o­nists before and since, pines for that which is gone. It’s a rea­son­able ques­tion to hear from any res­i­dent of Hong Kong, a city that has long exist­ed on a con­stant timer.

For most of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, that expi­ra­tion date was 1 July, 1997, the day that would see Britain’s lease of the Hong Kong region come to an end, trans­fer­ring sov­er­eign­ty back to main­land Chi­na. In the two decades since, the num­ber that many cit­i­zens of Hong Kong have been keep­ing a wary eye on is 2047, the year of expi­ra­tion for the main­land and Hong Kong’s ​“one coun­try, two sys­tems” frame­work that has allowed the lat­ter ter­ri­to­ry to main­tain its autonomy.

For some, the pre­ced­ing 2046 will be a year charged with anx­i­ety as the city hangs on the brink of change. For Wong, 2046 is both the num­ber of a sig­nif­i­cant room at the heart of his immac­u­late­ly com­posed 2000 film, In the Mood for Love, and the title of the director’s 2004 fea­ture, a visu­al­ly rav­ish­ing work that’s down­right apoc­a­lyp­tic in its suf­fo­cat­ing sense of dread and despair.

But let’s rewind a lit­tle. After all, that’s what Wong did for what is arguably his first great film. Form­ing an infor­mal ​’60s tril­o­gy with In the Mood for Love and 2046, 1990’s Days of Being Wild is set at the start of a decade that would see Hong Kong’s econ­o­my flour­ish, secur­ing its rep­u­ta­tion as a lead­ing Asian metrop­o­lis. It was also the decade in which a young Wong moved from the main­land to Hong Kong with his fam­i­ly amidst uneasy ten­sions that would soon man­i­fest as the Cul­tur­al Revolution.

Fit­ting­ly, it is an era Wong presents through a green-tint­ed fil­ter of nos­tal­gia, imbu­ing its dra­ma of young love and rest­less liv­ing with the seduc­tive exoti­cism of a dis­tant par­adise. Nat­u­ral­ly it can’t last, and so Days of Being Wild is replete with ear­ly exam­ples of one of Wong’s favourite visu­al motifs, the clock, which has served as an ongo­ing reminder through­out the director’s career of the cease­less for­ward march of time.

As the tur­bu­lent cen­tre of Days of Being Wild, Leslie Cheung’s Yud­dy lives like he hasn’t a moment to spare, assum­ing a self-roman­ti­cis­ing ​‘leg­less bird’ per­sona as he flies impul­sive­ly from woman to woman with­out ever stop­ping to land. His the­mat­ic coun­ter­point is found in one of his momen­tary lovers, Su Li-zhen (Mag­gie Che­ung), a woman for whom their brief time togeth­er lingers on as a sor­row­ful and bur­den­some mem­o­ry. These two per­son­al­i­ty types, one liv­ing aim­less­ly in the present and the oth­er liv­ing hope­less­ly in the past, would be of con­tin­ued inter­est to Wong in the years to come.

As the 1997 han­dover loomed ever clos­er, the world­view of the for­mer ​‘leg­less bird’ type would increas­ing­ly inform Wong’s work. 1994’s Chungk­ing Express is a film char­ac­terised by rest­less, roman­tic ener­gy and impend­ing change in which Brigitte Lin plays a mys­te­ri­ous blonde-wigged crim­i­nal who spec­u­lates humor­ous­ly on an unknow­able future (“He may like pineap­ples today. Tomor­row, he’ll like some­thing else.”) as she races against the clock. When her sto­ry con­cludes with the unnamed woman shoot­ing her treach­er­ous white drug baron asso­ciate, there is a sat­is­fy­ing sense of clo­sure that one can’t help but relate to the region’s own west­ern connections.

Nev­er­the­less, by the time Britain’s lease reached its eleventh hour, the youth­ful roman­ti­cism of Chungk­ing Express had con­gealed into some­thing gloomy, bit­ter and defeat­ed. The very first images of 1997’s Hap­py Togeth­er, which pre­miered mere weeks before the han­dover, are a series of close-ups of the British Hong Kong pass­ports of Lai (Tony Leung) and Ho (Leslie Che­ung) as the per­pet­u­al­ly bick­er­ing cou­ple makes the trip to Argenti­na, only to find them­selves mis­er­able, alien­at­ed and unable to return home. The emo­tion­al root­less­ness and geo­graph­i­cal dis­place­ment of these char­ac­ters echoes the lone­ly ambiva­lence of a pop­u­la­tion who weren’t sure what home was any­more, with the Hong Kong iden­ti­ty cur­rent­ly in a state of flux.

Though Hap­py Togeth­er fin­ish­es on an opti­mistic note of accep­tance and readi­ness for the future, as sig­nalled by the final shot of a train pulling into the next sta­tion, Wong’s post-han­dover out­put saw the film­mak­er with­draw­ing more than ever into a tor­tur­ous­ly pret­ty past. For the aes­thet­i­cal­ly exquis­ite In the Mood for Love, the impul­sive­ness of his ear­li­er dra­mas has been sti­fled into an oppres­sive still­ness and any last-minute sense of urgency is now replaced by painful regret. As a year at the edge of the unknown, 2046 lends its num­ber to a room where noth­ing real­ly hap­pens between almost-lovers Su Li-zhen and Chow (Tony Leung) but rather things get ago­nis­ing­ly close to happening.

It is in the 2004 fea­ture, 2046, how­ev­er, where Wong’s obses­sion with the past reach­es its oper­at­ic extreme. A work of night­mar­ish and self-con­scious­ly bom­bas­tic beau­ty, the film 2046 both observes and embod­ies the very human ten­den­cy to mag­ni­fy mem­o­ries over time, with the num­ber itself appear­ing as both a room num­ber and a fan­tas­ti­cal loca­tion in an imag­i­nary future where noth­ing changes. The amorous and ide­alised per­spec­tive of the unob­tain­able past found in Days of Being Wild is no longer just a pro­found styl­is­tic means of pre­sent­ing the story.

Now the fetishis­tic style is prac­ti­cal­ly the sto­ry in itself, with a ter­mi­nal­ly heart­bro­ken Chow see­ing lit­tle of con­se­quence beyond his own overblown emo­tions and mem­o­ries as he resides despair­ing­ly in room 2047. It is per­haps no coin­ci­dence that 2046 would be Wong’s last Hong Kong-based fea­ture for nine years, with the film serv­ing as the hyper­bol­ic end­point for over a decade’s worth of the­mat­ic build-up.

Though it would be wrong to reduce any of the director’s rich­ly lay­ered fea­tures to this sin­gle sociopo­lit­i­cal alle­go­ry, the Hong Kong iden­ti­ty remains an impor­tant con­nec­tive thread that runs through Wong Kar-wai’s great­est films. For those in the camp that con­sid­er Wong’s cin­e­ma to be all flash and no sub­stance, under­stand­ing the impor­tant con­tem­po­rary con­text of his works – with 1997 and 2047 as the crit­i­cal years – could help to illu­mi­nate the unique emo­tion­al and the­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties by which one of the great­est liv­ing direc­tors has com­posed some of his most melan­cholic and invig­o­rat­ing spectacles.