Nos­tal­gia fold­ing in upon itself: A vis­it to Wong Kar-wai’s Bangkok

Hav­ing set­tled into Bangkok — estab­lish­ing a greet­ings-based rhythm with the laun­dro­mat aun­tie next door — I decid­ed to look into film loca­tions to vis­it dur­ing my stay. I knew that that awful Brid­get Jones sequel had been part­ly filmed there, and that James Bond movie with Michelle Yeoh, but then, the search results turned up In the Mood for Love.

As any aspir­ing film buff or Sino­phone dias­poric will know, Wong Kar-wai’s fil­mog­ra­phy has been fun­da­men­tal in con­struct­ing the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion of what Hong Kong is, was, or could be. This imag­i­na­tion is delin­eat­ed by Hong Kong’s dis­tinct polit­i­cal predica­ment as a for­mer British colony, ini­tial­ly per­mit­ted 50 years of sov­er­eign pur­ga­to­ry before its for­mal han­dover to main­land Chi­na. Just as the city’s fate has been treat­ed like a geopo­lit­i­cal chess piece, the cin­e­ma of Hong Kong has respond­ed in kind — with films pre­oc­cu­pied with a past long gone, stunt­ed by an unknown future.

Doused with cul­tur­al sym­bols that harken back to a pre-mod­ernised Hong Kong, Wong’s auteur­ial sig­na­ture emanates from his fam­i­ly back­ground as a first gen­er­a­tion Shang­hainese immi­grant to Hong Kong, his fam­i­ly seek­ing refuge from the cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion. Accents and dialects inter­min­gle and co-exist in his works, Man­darin Chi­nese con­vers­ing with Can­tonese in dia­logue with Shang­hainese, an homage to the melt­ing pot that he roman­ti­cis­es as the city of his child­hood. There is an inter­re­lata­bil­i­ty and exchange­abil­i­ty that pur­ports to exist beyond geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict or dynam­ics of labour and class, for that matter.

In the Mood for Love is no excep­tion, hav­ing evolved from a romance musi­cal set in Bei­jing. After fac­ing push­back from the main­land Chi­nese cen­sors, the con­cept was relo­cat­ed to Hong Kong and became a trip­tych, with one chap­ter revolv­ing around a man and a woman con­nect­ing furtive­ly over food in the 1960s. Pro­duc­tion was once more brought to a halt as it became clear that film­ing out­doors would be impos­si­ble: the city had changed too much. Wong, strict­ly against build­ing sets and pre­fer­ring to shoot on loca­tion, found the 1990s high-rise boom impos­si­ble to dream from; the Hong Kong of old he longed to remem­ber was no longer to be found in the city.

It was while scout­ing loca­tions for his sub­se­quent film 2046 that he and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Christo­pher Doyle vis­it­ed Bangkok’s Ban­grak dis­trict. In one of the side streets — or sois, as they’re called in Bangkok — trick­ling off of Charoenkrung Road, Wong was revis­it­ed by that elu­sive feel­ing he had been search­ing for in Hong Kong. This loca­tion end­ed up serv­ing as the street out­side the build­ing where Tony Leung’s Mr. Chow and Mag­gie Cheung’s Mrs. Chan live. It is where the two pro­tag­o­nists shel­ter from the rain, test­ing the bound­aries between friend­ship, romance, and com­pan­ion­ship. Illu­mi­nat­ed by amber street light, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan loi­ter, find­ing more pri­va­cy out­doors than at home, away from the pry­ing eyes of nosy neighbours.

Above: Still from In The Mood For Love

I clam­bered onto the motorbike’s pas­sen­ger seat. After 21 min­utes of weav­ing through traf­fic, I thanked the dri­ver and hopped off, only to realise that I had input the wrong address in the Grab app and that I was about 10 blocks away. It was five in the after­noon as I wan­dered my way for­ward, peri­od­i­cal­ly check­ing the route on my phone, pass­ing by groups of uni­formed teenagers and cur­rents of salary workers.

A few min­utes away from my des­ti­na­tion, the noise stopped, both son­ic and visu­al. The streets were now paved with a con­crete that made the roads look fresh­ly glazed. Ten­ta­tive­ly step­ping through a park­ing lot, I glanced down to con­firm that I had arrived. Look­ing back up, I was met with an aus­tere face of cor­ru­gat­ed iron much taller than me.

This was a tran­si­to­ry place, a site whose only pur­pose was to become some­thing else. The most per­ma­nent thing wel­com­ing me was a util­i­ty post, its gen­er­a­tor guard­ed by a struc­ture rem­i­nis­cent of a mil­i­tary check­point. In an iron­ic twist of fate, the street which had passed as pre-mod­ernised 1960s Hong Kong was itself being sub­ject­ed to rede­vel­op­ment, three decades lat­er. I was sur­prised to find that I had been expect­ing an illu­sion, cob­bled togeth­er from the film and from my mem­o­ries of watch­ing it — a mirage that was com­plete­ly dis­joint­ed from the street’s mate­r­i­al real­i­ty, as if it could be untouched by the world out­side the film in the first place. Tak­ing a moment to recal­i­brate, I backed away from the fence, and noticed a flash of bright­ness among all the hues of grey.

Peek­ing out behind the util­i­ty post’s tow­er­ing arms was a win­dow, con­trast­ing­ly ornate. Its sealed shut­ters vibrat­ed a friend­ly sage green, its arched top fanned out in a sym­met­ri­cal art deco sun­beam, extend­ing an invi­ta­tion to be beheld that punc­tured the con­struc­tion site’s steely func­tion­al frame. This sole trace of the street’s past as a major, if uncred­it­ed, actor in In the Mood for Love waved at me. It was like the first time meet­ing a fam­i­ly mem­ber who I remem­bered from spot­ting them in pho­tographs, rather than from any present memory.

The win­dow appeared so much new­er in front of me than the street does onscreen. In the film, the alleyway’s paint is peel­ing off like a flaky pas­try, with deep cracks wrin­kling the walls. Noth­ing is smooth or even. You can almost smell the rust when the cam­era peeks out behind bent win­dow grills to glimpse Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan whis­per­ing to each oth­er, heads tilt­ed. Here, the coat was paint­ed so uni­form­ly, the win­dow beam­ing a sat­u­rat­ed glow as if recent­ly dec­o­rat­ed by car­ing hands.

Top: Still from In The Mood For Love. Mid­dle: Pho­tos by author. Bot­tom: Screen­shot from Google Streetview, dat­ed June 2019, show­ing the begin­ning of con­struc­tion and the win­dows look­ing much old­er than when the author vis­it­ed the location. 

It wasn’t clear to me what future was being pro­ject­ed onto this patch of land — maybe this street, once host to Wong Kar-wai’s ele­giac nos­tal­gia, will come to host an office build­ing, or lux­u­ry con­dos, or a quaint rus­tic shop­ping dis­trict. I had learned from my friend Krit­ti that Charoenkrung Road and its sur­round­ing streets have been sub­ject to gen­tri­fi­ca­tion in the last few years — wear and tear repack­aged as pho­to op authen­tic­i­ty. Per­haps this unex­pect­ed dis­con­nect between on- and off-screen was less a twist of irony and more so the fact of exist­ing in an eco­nom­ic sys­tem that builds atop his­to­ries as a strat­e­gy to churn out new trends for con­sumers to crave. Arguably, Wong’s desire to emu­late a dis­tant past by pro­ject­ing 1960s Hong Kong onto 1990s Bangkok was also a form of spa­tial dis­place­ment, moti­vat­ed by pin­ing for a lost past rather than chas­ing a prof­itable future. Were Wong to vis­it the same street today, I’m sure he would not have deemed it a suit­able nos­tal­gic con­tain­er for his wist­ful fantasies.

I stood there in the late afternoon’s dwin­dling heat, gaz­ing upon the con­struc­tion site, imag­in­ing Wong’s cast and crew mov­ing around the space. Did they know that they were mark­ing this site to be frozen in a state of yearn­ful haunt­ing? Did they know that as long as some­one is watch­ing In the Mood for Love this soi off of Charoenkrung Road will be trapped onscreen as a ghost­ly man­i­fes­ta­tion of Wong Kar-wai’s mourn­ing for the Hong Kong of his child­hood? As the clos­ing title card of the film laments, ​“He remem­bers those van­ished years. As though look­ing through a dusty win­dow pane, the past is some­thing he could see, but not touch.” Those that choose to vis­it this street might find them­selves trapped in yet anoth­er cycle of look­ing back — to when the street could even be read as any­thing but a con­struc­tion site, let alone pass­ing as 1960s Hong Kong.

Top: Screen­shot from Google Streetview, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 2017. Bot­tom: Still from In The Mood For Love.