Wong Kar-wai

Wong Kar-wai ({{zh-tsp|t=王家衛|s=王家卫|p=Wáng Jiāwèi}}) (born July 17, 1958) is a Hong Kong film director known for his unique visual style of romantic art films. His trademark fashion style is wearing dark sunglasses.

Work as director

He made his directing debut in 1988 with As Tears Go By. It was a crime melodrama of the kind then hugely popular, and with heavy borrowings from Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1974), but already displayed one of his principal trademarks in its atmospheric and sometimes expressionistic color palette. It is his only box office hit to date.

Related Topics:
As Tears Go By - Melodrama - Martin Scorsese - Mean Streets - Expressionistic - Palette - Box office

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His next film, Days of Being Wild (1990), a drama about aimless youth set in the early 1960s, established his trademark form: elliptically plotted mood pieces, with lush visuals and music, about the burden of memory on melancholy, misfit characters. Days was a box office failure but now regularly tops Hong Kong critics' polls of the best local films ever made. It has been described as a sort of Cantonese Rebel Without a Cause.

Related Topics:
Days of Being Wild - Rebel Without a Cause

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He also established his own independent production company, called Jet Tone Films Ltd. in English. His partner in the company is Jeffrey Lau, a director and producer who tends to work closer to the populist vein of mainstream Hong Kong film.

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Wong went on to direct several more feature films in the 1990s produced by Jet Tone, which allowed him to work at his own pace. Among these were Chungking Express (1994), which is a Godardesque foray into the lives of two love-struck cops and mysterious women. In the same vein Fallen Angels (1995), often considered a third segment or sequel of Chungking Express, is a neo-noir focused on a disillusioned killer trying to overcome the affections of his partner, a strange drifter looking for her ex-boyfriend, and a mute trying to get the world's attention in his own ways, all set against a sordid and surreal urban nightscape.

Related Topics:
Chungking Express - Godardesque - Fallen Angels

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Wong's fourth movie, Ashes of Time (1994), released between Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, applied his approach to a star-studded wuxia (martial arts swordplay) story; the desert shoot in Mainland China dragged on for over a year and resulted in one of contemporary Hong Kong cinema's most notorious commercial disasters.

Related Topics:
Ashes of Time - Wuxia

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His first major international recognition was at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival where he won the Best Director prize for Happy Together (1997). A film that "uses gorgeous, saturated images set to an eclectic soundtrack of classic tangos, torch songs and Frank Zappa instrumentals to chronicle the stormy affair of a gay couple living as expatriates in Buenos Aires." http://www.multilingualbooks.com/foreignvids-chin-wongkarwai.html

Related Topics:
Cannes Film Festival - Happy Together - Frank Zappa - Buenos Aires

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Despite his background as a scriptwriter, one of Wong's trademarks as a director is that he works largely through improvisation and experimentation involving the actors and crew rather than adhering to a fixed screenplay. This has been a frequent source of trouble for his actors, his financial backers and many other people connected with his films, including sometimes himself.

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The filming of In the Mood for Love (2000) had to be shifted from Beijing to Macau after the China Film Bureau demanded to see the completed script. This was all in all a minor setback in the "very complicated evolution" of the project which goes as far back as 1997. It was Wong's intention to make two films, one of which would be titled Summer in Beijing, the plot unclear at the time, but eventually taking form in Macau. Here Wong planned to call it Three Stories About Food, but saw it better to settle for only one story, A Story About Food, that centers on a writer. Together with scenes shot in Bangkok and Angkor Wat, the filming took as long as 15 months. This was an especially arduous time for lead actress Maggie Cheung whose hair and makeup reportedly took a daily five hours, and who appeared in different cheongsams in each scene. She famously compared the lengthy shoot to a cold she couldn't get rid of. Working without deadlines, the film's upcoming premier at Cannes nonetheless put some pressure on Wong to finish editing. Intending to name the film Secrets he was dissuaded by Cannes, and finally named it In the Mood for Love after Bryan Ferry's cover of the song "I'm in the Mood for Love" he was listening to. (Kaufman http://www.indiewire.com/people/int_Wong_Kar-Wai_010202.html, Rayns http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/2000_08/eiff_wongkarwai.html)

Related Topics:
In the Mood for Love - Beijing - Macau - 1997 - Bangkok - Angkor Wat - Maggie Cheung - Cheongsams - Cannes - Bryan Ferry

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It is now well known that a running joke amongst the crew of 2046 (2004) was that he would finish in the year 2046. However, the time-consuming method seems to be a key to Wong's unique style.

Related Topics:
2046 - 2046

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Short films

Wong Kar-wai has directed various short films, television commercials, music videos, or combinations thereof, all faithful to his style. Most notable short films for commercial purposes include

Related Topics:
Television commercial - Music video - Wkw/tk/1996@7′55″hk.net - Takeo Kikuchi - Tadanobu Asano - Karen Mok - Motorola - Faye Wong - Lacoste - Chang Chen - Diane MacMahon - JC Decaux - Dawn - BMW films - Six Days - DJ Shadow - Danielle Graham - Hua Yang De Nian Hua - California - Berlin International Film Festival

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