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Cast: Leslie Cheung (Yuddy), Maggie Cheung (Su Li-Zhen), Carina Lau (Leung Fung-Ying/ Mimi), Andy Lau (Tide), Jacky Cheung (Zeb), Rebecca Pan (Tik-Wa Poon)
Directed by: Wong Kar Wai
Release Date: March 1991

Each shot composed like a fluid painting of motions, diffuse colors and silhouettes. Timeless themes of failed love, subterranean yearnings and memories. Wong Kar Wai had perfected his incandescent poetic sensibility in his second movie itself. Well…almost. Days of being wild is a precursor to Chungking Express and In the mood for love. As in these later works, here too we find handsome, lonely characters walking through the neon lit streets and alleys of 1960s Hong-Kong, passing through light and shadow in old apartments. In a constant all-consuming quest for fulfillment.

The movie opens with Yuddy casually strolling into the stadium refreshments counter. Su is standing behind the counter. Waif-like. With hair falling all over her face, looking vulnerable and innocently beautiful. Yuddy tells her that she would see him in her dreams that night. She doesn’t. Because she’s unable to sleep. A day later, he tells her to look at his watch for one minute and announces that he is going to remember that minute forever because of her. Su falls for him…hard. But Yuddy is an inveterate Casanova. Brought up by a former high class escort, the only thing he cares about is finding out the identity of his biological mother. Which his foster mother refuses to reveal. It’s almost as if to take his mind off his desperation he seduces women. Only to leave them leave them stranded and broken by the wayside.

Leslie Cheung invests the character of Yuddy with an irresistible melancholic nonchalance. His eyes are permanently clouded by an intense lost look. His self-destructive violent streak rounds up his charismatic persona.

Soon, he has moved on to the lively, vivacious Mimi. Unlike Su, she is well-aware of her charms and knows how to use them. But with Yuddy, after the first night itself, she’s trapped. She’s as helpless as a flightless bird. She lives in constant apprehension of losing him. And Su? She keeps on coming back to Yuddy’s house each night. And sitting on a bench outside. Each time promising herself that this would be the last night. A sympathetic policeman (Andy Lau) patrolling the area helps her to endure the long, interminable minutes and hours. One night as Su’s leaving, the policeman realizes that this is really the last night. In a haunting scene, we see him still walking the streets on his daily beat. And stopping for a while each time he passes the phone booth. Waiting for her call. Though he knows that it’s never going to come.

At the same time, Yuddy’s roguish friend, Zeb is falling in love with Mimi. In spite of Mimi’s half-joking warning to be careful about the same.

Towards the end, there is shootout in a station restaurant. The device is sort of forced. It’s used to bring about a sense of closure. But who cares about such trivial flaws when your senses have been overpowered by Christopher Doyle’s masterful cinematography. (I forgot to mention that this was their first collaboration.)

Wong Kar-Wai entirely eschews the traditional three act structure of storytelling. Here there is no conflict between form and content. Because form itself is the content.

In his world, lives are ruled by the inscrutable whims of time. For his characters, romance is an inescapable malaise. Bringing moments of bliss followed by an eternity of anguish. For us, the audience, it is an opportunity to see an artist discovering his vision. And irreverently reinventing the cinematic language.

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