Right out of the gate—and even working within the modern Hong Kong gangster genre—Wong Kar-wai burst onto the screen as a strikingly unique talent. This is clearly a filmmaker less interested in plot and dialogue than he is in movement, music, and color—no matter the time, place, or story.
Consider the rose glow that emanates from a television set onto the face of Ngor (Maggie Cheung) early in As Tears Go By. Ngor has come to Hong Kong from a neighboring island for medical treatment, staying in the apartment of Wah (Andy Lau), a distant cousin. She—and we—soon discover that Wah works with his close friend, Fly (Jacky Cheung), as muscle for a local loan shark. When the impulsive, irreverent Fly starts causing waves in the gangster underworld (think Robert De Niro in Mean Streets), Wah finds himself caught in the middle—even as he and Ngor embark on a timid romance.
Since this is Wong, however, all you really need to know is that the narrative framework allows for palpable longing among beautiful characters who are clearly doomed. The longing is expressed not in verbose declarations, but the rose glow from the TV, which suggests that something is blossoming between Wah and Ngor before it actually does. When they finally admit their feelings to each other, they do so via slow, hesitant gestures—Ngor tentatively trailing Wah up the staircase of his hotel as a Sandy Lam cover of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” pulses on the soundtrack. (Later, Ngor waits for Wah at the bottom of another staircase by the marina, wondering if he’ll return as promised.) In Wong films, consummation is never as sumptuous as expectation; the longing is more exquisite than the actual love.
As for the doom, that too is mostly communicated via mis en scene (although the sudden and brutal violence—filmed in smeared, staccato slow motion—also makes it clear that any happiness is tenuous). Notice the way the glare from the overhead fluorescent lighting in a gambling den washes out any sense of life (yet is still strangely beautiful). Or the dark alley that Fly stumbles down after being beaten up, staggering his way toward the menacingly red glow of the waiting street at the rear of the screen. These characters are going down, but they’re going to go down in visually operatic ways.
The doom and longing blend in the final scene of As Tears Go By, set in a police-station parking lot that features orange translucent banners softly blowing in the breeze. Fly makes the worst of his many bad decisions (I won’t spoil the details); Wah, once again, tries to save him, but only manages to bring more suffering upon himself. In the midst of the violence, there is a flash of memory depicting Wah and Ngor embracing in a phone booth and we’re reminded that one of the panels of the phone booth was painted the same hue as those banners. For Wong, color is character.
