Days of Being Wild (1990)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Days of Being Wild (1990) – Kar-Wai Wong

Wong Kar-Wai’s second film (before his international breakthrough Chungking Express, 1994) is another example of his style over substance technique.  This glimpse at Hong Kong in 1962 is all greens and blues and greys, perhaps fitting for a nostalgic reverie, but somehow dark.  And so is the subject matter, which transmutes Rebel Without a Cause (from which it gets it title a la the Hong Kongese translation) into a blur of insolent moves by twentysomethings who do or do not want to care.  But it is hard to get inside these characters (played by emerging stars Leslie Cheung, Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau) whose motivations seem to be only grand gestures or reactions to those of others.  This strategy comes together much better in the next film in the putative trilogy, In the Mood for Love (2000), starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, the latter of which appears mysteriously in a coda to the earlier film (apparently with the rest of his role left on the cutting room floor).  This is one to check for a mood induction of the blue kind.