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Flynn3.0

and they were cousins

Josh Lewis3.0

It's a testament to Wong Kar-wai's skill as a filmmaker that this very mediocre Hong Kong triad film is still beautiful and frequently filled with genuine romantic yearning. What can I say? I'm a sucker for swooning synth sounds and dreamy neon photography. Also Maggie Cheung. 🥺

davidehrlich3.5

“None of us knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, right? Let’s eat.”It began, as all great careers should, with Maggie Cheung showing up on Andy Lau’s doorstep in a cotton face mask — and what better to set the tone for Wong Kar Wai’s filmography than a little social distancing? It’s easy to understand why people are quick to dismiss Wong’s debut as a foot-in-the-door movie beholden to the conventions of ‘80s Hong Kong crime thrillers (the film’s plot invites “Mean Streets” comparisons that haven’t extended to its place in the canon). “As Tears Go By” remains a fascinating document of a young artist trying to articulate his own identity through a language that lacked the vocabulary he needed — a language that he would ultimately have to invent. Tentative and brash in equal measure, it tells the story of mob enforcer Wah (Lau) and the delinquent best friend Fly (Jacky Cheung, a rolling wave of destructive id in the Robert De Niro role) who keeps threatening to get them both killed by the rest of the triads.The ins and outs of it are a little more complicated, but Wong can’t be bothered to sweat the details; he’s more interested in the rush of a camera through a snooker hall chase sequence, the “what might have been” that Cheung’s character offers from her seaside perch on Lantau Island, and the melted cheese of the Cantopop soundtrack that’s gooey enough to take your breath away. The gunplay and its attendant nihilism seem like afterthoughts compared to, say, the match-cut that transforms a paper airplane into a commercial airliner, or a gang fight that’s step-printed to abstraction. Many of the shot compositions in “As Tears Go By” reflect a conventionality that would soon disappear from Wong’s lexicon, and the broad melodrama they support (“I destroyed your baby!” a woman yells while thunder claps in the background) would mercifully dissolve into the atmosphere by the time the sun rose on “Days of Being Wild.” The haunted essence of Wong’s cinema — the sense of letting another life slip through your fingers — is here on full display. It’s possible that “As Tears Go By” is more rewarding to excavate than it is to watch (or perhaps it’s simply impossible to see outside of the context of its director’s career), even if Wong’s lifelong refusal to judge his characters whether they’re mob goons or cops or hitmen or home invaders or belligerently drunk David Strathairns adds a rich new wrinkle to a genre that’s long on blood and short on heart. It’s understandable that “Days of Being Wild” is seen as the birth of the Wong Kar Wai we’ve all come to know, that view unfairly dismisses the work he did to get there. In hindsight, it’s even more fascinating to see Wong find his rhythm amidst the noise of mainstream cinema than it is to see him conduct on his own terms for the first time.