With the eagerly anticipated 2005 release of not one but two new films by writer/director Wong Kar-Wai, (2046 and THE HAND, a segment of the Steven Soderbergh/Michelangelo Antonioni/Wong EROS trilogy), now is the perfect time to review the Hong Kong auteur's body of work. The former screenwriter-for-hire came up through Hong Kong cinema's booming '80s to direct subversively romantic versions of HK's stock-in-trade Triad-gangster pics (AS TEARS GO BY) and martial arts epics (ASHES OF TIME), perfecting his utterly unique visual and storytelling style with regular collaborators William Chang (art director/editor) and Christopher Doyle (the dazzling cameraman behind HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS). With firsthit DAYS OF BEING WILD and breakout-success CHUNGKING EXPRESS, Wong's aesthetic was firmly established: dreamy romanticism that conceals political commentary; guerilla nighttime shooting and bravura hand-held camerawork; color-coded symbolization and pop music leitmotifs; and non-stop interior monologues from characters so exquisitely lovesick as to find even their loneliness blissful. The international acclaim of subsequent releases HAPPY TOGETHER and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE secured Wong's stature as a world filmmaker: consistently innovative and more emotionally profound with every picture.

HAPPY TOGETHER
[Cheun Gwong Tsa Sit]

Lovers Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheung leave Hong Kong for Buenos Aires to seek a fresh start-and instead break up. But the first breakup never sticks. With heroic performances from Leung and Cheung, and controversy over the film's homosexual content and politics vis-à-vis Hong Kong's 1997 return to the mainland. The result was a box office smash in Hong Kong and abroad. Best Director, Cannes Film Festival.

Directed/written by Wong Kar-Wai; produced by Ye-Cheng Chan and Chan Yechang. Hong Kong, 1997, b&w/color, 96 min. In Mandarin, Cantonese and Spanish with English subtitles. RATED R

New 35mm Print!
IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE
[Fa Yeung Nin Wa]

Wong's most acclaimed film to date manages to be both arch and accessible, and perhaps the purest distillation of his romance with nostalgia. In 1962 Hong Kong, neighbors Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu Wai discover that their spouses are having an affair. Their shared grief leads to close friendship, then temptation, then... ?

Directed/written/produced by Wong Kar-Wai. Hong Kong, 2000, color, 98 min. In Shanghainese and Cantonese with English subtitles. RATED PG

BUENOS AIRES ZERO DEGREE
[Sip si ling dou-cheun gwong tsa sit]

"This behind-the-scenes look at the making of HAPPY TOGETHER provides thoughtful insight into Wong's unique creative process. The director's sometimes criticized reputation for improvisational screenwriting and tireless revision is illuminated by the hours of film that were shot and never included in the final cut of the film. By piecing together Wong's unused footage and watching his creative process unfold, we see the potential for entirely different films being born and dying before our eyes."-Northwest Film Center, Portland, Oregon.

Directed/written by Kwan Pun-Leung and Amos Lee. Hong Kong, 1999, color, 68 min. In Cantonese and Spanish with English subtitles. UNRATED

AS TEARS GO BY
[Wong Gok Ka Moon]

Triad "big brother" Andy Lau tries to protect loose cannon "little brother" Jackie Cheung from selfdestruction, but learns the hard way that some people don't want to be saved. There's enough creative violence to satisfy as a gangster film, but Wong's romantic fixations are already in place: Lau's hesitant romance with country cousin Maggie Cheung blossoms suddenly into a music video-like rapture, set to a Canto-Pop cover of Berlin's Take My Breath Away.

Directed/written/produced by Wong Kar-Wai. Hong Kong, 1988, color, 100 min. In Cantonese with English subtitles. UNRATED. INTERNATIONAL SUGGESTED VIEWING AGE: 18 AND OVER.

ASHES OF TIME
[Dung Che Sai Duk]

Mythic and mysterious, Wong's Song Dynasty period piece has less to do with martial arts than aching hearts, specifically that of lonely swordsman Leslie Cheung, who never confessed his love to Maggie Cheung and suffered silently as she married his brother. An existential meditation on affairs of the heart, memory and learning to forget, set in an otherworldly desert wasteland where warriors sometimes seek their fortune-and sometimes, oblivion.

Directed/written by Wong Kar-Wai; from the novel The Eagle Shooting Heroesby Louis Cha; produced by Sung-Lin Chai. Hong Kong, 1994, color, 100 min. In Cantonese with English subtitles. UNRATED

New 35mm Print! New English Subtitles!
DAYS OF BEING WILD
[A Fei Jing Juen]

In 1960s Hong Kong, idle playboy Leslie Cheung is kept in luxury by his retired courtesan foster mother, who gives him everything he needs but not the one thing he wants: the identity of his natural mother. Self-obsessed and careless with his own loved ones-including girlfriends Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau-Cheung bolts for the Philippines in search of his identity, and possibly his doom.

Directed/written by Wong Kar-Wai; produced by Rover Tang. Hong Kong, 1991, color, 94 min. In Cantonese, Tagalog, Tamil, English and Mandarin with English subtitles. RATED PG-13

CHUNGKING EXPRESS
[Chong Qing Sen Lin]

Broken-hearted cops, diva gangsters, shop girl secret admirers and liberated stewardesses run riot in Wong's buoyant, quirky romance. Featuring outstanding performances from vets Brigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung Chiu Wai, but pop star Faye Wong's blissfully unselfconscious dance to the Mamas and the Papas' California Dreamingmay represent the consummate Wong Kar-Wai moment.

Directed/written by Wong Kar-Wai; produced by Yi-Kan Chan. Hong Kong, 1994, color, 102 min. In Cantonese with English Subtitles. RATED PG-13

FALLEN ANGELS
[Duo Luo Tian Shi]

Originally the final of three story lines in CHUNGKING EXPRESS, Wong spun off this tale of a lonely hit man and his lonelier business manager into a separate movie. A much darker take on the denizens of the Hong Kong night, it makes good on the promise of AS TEARS GO BY's stylized violence, with expressionistic visual flourishes and Christopher Doyle's camera whirling and whooshing at its FLYING DAGGER-fastest.

Directed/written by Wong Kar-Wai; produced by Jeffrey Lau. Hong Kong, 1995, color, 90 min. In Cantonese with English subtitles. RATED PG-13