MOVIE REVIEW : Romantic, Dark ‘Days’ Paints Hong Kong With Shadows

Wong Kar-Wai’s 1991 “Days of Being Wild” offers the flip side of his dazzling “Chung-king Express.” Like the latter film, it is a romantic fable of the vicissitudes of love and the role fate plays in our lives, expressed with a bravura, go-for-broke style, but it is as dark and sober as “Chung-king” is bright and amusing. Imagine, if you will, a Hong Kong movie without so much as a single neon sign in view; it’s a film seen in shadows.

Leslie Cheung stars as the boyishly handsome, indolent York, nicknamed Yoddy. As the film opens--it is 1960--he has just learned from the chic, clearly wealthy woman (Rebecca Pan) who has raised him that she is not his real mother. Apparently supporting him, she’s afraid of losing him and initially resists revealing his actual mother’s identity and location. Her half-revelation sets off a depth charge, confusing the emotions the two feel for each other. Yet the idea of a quest for his birth mother becomes for him a possible way out of the aimlessness of his existence.

In the meantime, two young women have the misfortune to fall in love with him. First is the demure So Lai-Chan (Maggie Cheung), an employee at a sports arena. Second is Mimi (Carina Lau), a flashy nightclub dancer. It would seem that York is one of those passive, noncommittal men that some women, even as different in temperament as these two, find a challenge, losing their hearts in trying to hold on to them.

Lai-Chan pours her heart out to the cop (Andy Lau) on the beat outside Pan’s estate, high up on a mountain road, possibly on Victoria Peak. York and the cop will subsequently cross paths in the film’s climactic sequence. The more direct, quickly jealous Mimi engages in frequent tantrums in York’s presence. As if these weren’t enough complications, York’s pal (Jacky Cheung) feels unstated, unrequited love for Mimi.

Not surprisingly, “Days of Being Wild,” which concludes in the Philippines, is hard to follow but well worth the effort. That’s because Wong is a born cinema virtuoso who can elicit genuine emotions while expressing them amid an atmosphere of the most sweeping romanticism.

It’s a tribute to Wong’s passion and fluidity--and to the resourcefulness and boldness of his usual cameraman, Christopher Doyle--that “Days of Being Wild” can recall Max Ophuls while “Chung-king Express” has the quirkiness that makes it understandable why Quentin Tarantino presented it, introducing Wong to audiences beyond Chinatown.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film has some lovemaking, some violence, adult themes and a complex style.

‘Days of Being Wild’

Leslie Cheung: York (Yoddy)

Andy Lau: Policeman

Maggie Cheung: So Lai-Chan

Carina Lau: Mimi

A Rim release of an an In-Gear Film production. Writer-director Wong Kar-Wai. Producer Rover Tang. Executive producer Alan Tang. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Editor Kai Kit-Wai. Music Chan Do-Ming. Art director William Chang. In Cantonese, with Chinese and English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Grande 4-Plex, in the Sheraton Grande Hotel, 3rd and Figueroa, (213) 617-0268.