Wong Kar Wai

Days of Being Wild

Days of Being Wild

The breakthrough sophomore feature by Wong Kar Wai represents the first full flowering of his swooning signature style. The initial entry in a loosely connected, ongoing cycle that includes In the Mood for Love and 2046, this ravishing existential reverie is a dreamlike drift through the Hong Kong of the 1960s in which a band of wayward twentysomethings—including a disaffected playboy (Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing) searching for his birth mother, a lovelorn woman (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) hopelessly enamored with him, and a policeman (Andy Lau Tak Wah) caught in the middle of their turbulent relationship—pull together and push apart in a dance of frustrated desire. The director’s inaugural collaboration with both cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who lends the film its gorgeously gauzy, hallucinatory texture, and actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai, who appears briefly in a tantalizing teaser for a never-realized sequel, Days of Being Wild is an exhilarating first expression of Wong’s trademark themes of time, longing, dislocation, and the restless search for human connection.

Film Info

  • Hong Kong
  • 1990
  • 95 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.85:1
  • Cantonese

Available In

Collector's Set

World of Wong Kar Wai

World of Wong Kar Wai

Blu-ray Box Set

7 Discs

$159.96

Days of Being Wild
Cast
Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing
Yuddy
Andy Lau Tak Wah
Policeman
Maggie Cheung Man Yuk
Su Li-Zhen
Carina Lau Ka Ling
Leung Fung-Ying/Lulu/Mimi
Jacky Cheung Hok Yau
Zeb
Rebecca Pan
Rebecca
Credits
Director
Wong Kar Wai
Producer
Rover Tang Gwong Chow
Executive producer
Alan Tang Kwong Wing
Cinematography by
Christopher Doyle
Edited by
Patrick Tam
Edited by
Hai Kit Wai
Art director
William Chang Suk Ping
Costume designer
Lu Ha Fong

Current

World of Wong Kar Wai: Like the Most Beautiful Times
World of Wong Kar Wai: Like the Most Beautiful Times

By marrying the glamour of golden-age Hollywood to a quicksilver formal daring influenced by a wide range of artists, the Hong Kong auteur became one of the coolest and most beloved filmmakers in the world in the 1990s.

By John Powers