Wong Kar-wai

(Left to right) Christopher Doyle, Chang Shu-Ping, Wong Kar-Wai on 2046 set in Shanghai, China

Wong Kar-wai (Traditional Chinese: 王家衛; Simplified Chinese: 王家卫; pinyin: Wáng Jiāwèi) (born July 17, 1958) is a Hong Kong film director.

Born in Shanghai, China, he moved to Hong Kong with his parents at the age of five. After graduating from Hong Kong Polytechnic College in graphic design in 1980, he enrolled in the Production Training Course organized by Hong Kong Television Broadcasts Limited and became a full-time television scriptwriter. He subsequently graduated to feature film work. He is credited with about ten scripts between 1982 and 1987, covering an array of genres from romantic comedy to action drama, but claims to have worked to some extent or another on about fifty more without official credit (Hoover and Stokes, 1999). He considers Final Victory (最後勝利, 1986), a dark comedy/crime story for director Patrick Tam, his best script.

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.

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.

Wong went on to direct six more feature films and win several awards, including the Best Director prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for Happy Together. He also established his own independent production company, called Jet Tone Films Ltd. in English. His partner in the company is Jeff Lau, a director and producer who tends to work closer to the populist vein of mainstream Hong Kong film.

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.

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 settled 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 [1], Rayns [2])

Wong's fourth movie, Ashes of Time (1994), 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.

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.

In 2001 Wong Kar-wai directed the short-film The Hire: The Follow as part of the BMW films initiative.

1 Filmography
- 1.1 Feature films
- 1.2 Short films
2 Awards
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
6 Further Reading

Filmography

Feature films

Eros (2004) – segment The Hand
2046 (2004)
In the Mood for Love (2000)
Happy Together (1997)
Fallen Angels (1995)
Ashes of Time (1994)
Chungking Express (1994)
Days of Being Wild (1991)
As Tears Go By (1988)

Short films

Six Days (2002)
The Hire: The Follow (2001)
Hua Yang de Nian Hua (2000)
wkw/tk/1996@7′55″ht.net (1996)

Awards

2004 European Film Awards, Screen International Award (2046)
2001 César Award, Best Foreign Film (In the Mood for Love)
2000 European Film Awards, Screen International Award (In the Mood for Love)
1997 Cannes Film Festival, Best Director (Happy Together)

References

Bordwell, David. Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. ISBN 0–674–00214–8

Dannen, Fredric, and Barry Long. Hong Kong Babylon: The Insider's Guide to the Hollywood of the East. New York: Miramax, 1997. ISBN 0–7868–6267-X

Stokes, Lisa Odham, and Michael Hoover. City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema. London: Verso, 1999. ISBN 1–85984–203–8

External links

Fansites

Articles

Interviews

Indiewire The "Mood" of Wong Kar-wai by Anthony Kaufman on In the Mood for Love
Astyle Feature Exclusive Interview on Happy Together
Bombsite Interview on In the Mood for Love by Liza Bear, who also talks about the director's unique visual flair
Mood Music Jonathan Romney talks to Wong Kar-wai about his latest film
Onion AV Club Interview on In the Mood for Love, 2046, and the acclaimed director's filmmaking experience and style
Sights and Sounds Tony Rayn's interview with Wong Kar-wai on film-making
TIMEasia – And The Winner Is... Interview with Wong Kar-wai on the release of In the Mood for Love, by Stephen Short
Urban Cinefile Feature Audio Interview with Wong Kar-wai, talking about In the Mood for Love, with Richard Kupier

Other

BMW Films