«In what logic (or in what cultural space) can we inscribe the films of Wong Kar-wai? My answer is: in the logic of dandyist Pan-Asianism. In this culture, capitalism is parodied, good and bad guys appear as dreamy clones of themselves, and Asia is only evoked after having gone through mneme, that is, through the director's personal memory of "Asia."
In Wong Kar-wai's films there are, apart from in Ashes of Time, few objects that deserve the predicate "Asian" in a historical or traditional sense. Still, anyone who has traveled in modern Asian countries will recognize a clearly spelled out "Asian reality" in Wong's settings that consist of convenience stores, noodle bars and fast food joints, of narrow alleys and long shopping arcades.
In Wong Kar-wai's films there are, apart from in Ashes of Time, few objects that deserve the predicate "Asian" in a historical or traditional sense. Still, anyone who has traveled in modern Asian countries will recognize a clearly spelled out "Asian reality" in Wong's settings that consist of convenience stores, noodle bars and fast food joints, of narrow alleys and long shopping arcades.
Wong depicts post-colonial Asian modernity highlighting everything that
Westerners find so astounding: unbelievably crammed apartments combined
with an abundance of merchandise and ubiquitous consumerism. He even
overemphasizes urban density by interweaving, for example in Fallen Angels,
the existence of three types of transport in one single place (trains, cars and
airplanes); in Happy Together he shows strangely undefined living spaces and in
Chungking Express and Fallen Angels some spaces are simply impossible to live
in.
The Western traveler finds that housing conditions are evidence - even in
Japan - of the countries' only relatively recent ascent to "Western modernity."
In real Hong Kong and in real Japan we constantly feel a non-modem past; a
past which is also constantly present in Wong Kar-wai's films: decaying
storefronts, kilos of paint peeling off the walls, and entirely messed up plans of
urbanization.
(...)
Wong cultivates in his films an explicit Hong Kong-Shanghai link. In Days of Being Wild and in In the Mood for Love, Rebecca, played by Shanghai-born singer Rebecca Pan (and herself a personification of the Hong Kong-Shanghai link), is from Shanghai and her personality evokes the lifestyle of Shanghai of the 1930s. In the Mood for Love is played out among the people of the Shanghai diaspora of Hong Kong in the 1960s. In 2046, one actually has the impression of being in 1940s Shanghai rather than in the Hong Kong of 1966.
Wong cultivates in his films an explicit Hong Kong-Shanghai link. In Days of Being Wild and in In the Mood for Love, Rebecca, played by Shanghai-born singer Rebecca Pan (and herself a personification of the Hong Kong-Shanghai link), is from Shanghai and her personality evokes the lifestyle of Shanghai of the 1930s. In the Mood for Love is played out among the people of the Shanghai diaspora of Hong Kong in the 1960s. In 2046, one actually has the impression of being in 1940s Shanghai rather than in the Hong Kong of 1966.
The qipao, also
used in In the Mood for Love and Eros, contributes to this Shanghai atmosphere
while the tango, an equally important element of Shanghai culture, has a similar effect. Tango dancing in Happy Together (situated in the Chinese community of
Buenos Aires) creates the strange impression of a Chinese/Argentinean cultural
superposition.
Compare this with Liu Kang's description of a Shanghai dance
party: "When held in the dimly lit European style pubs in Shanghai and accompanied
by live dance bands, the well-dressed, but by now grey-haired, couples,
long retired employees of Western firms established in the 1940s, could indulge
in nostalgia for the bygone days of Shanghai's colonial glory and decadence.
Shanghai is the 'authentic origin' of Western style cultural life." We find here
a great deal of the atmosphere of Wong's films.
(...)
L 'Amour impossible is the title of a novel written by one of the foremost 19' century dandies, the French writer Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. L 'Amour impossible could also be the title of almost all of Wong Kar-wai's films. Tsung-yi-Huang has shown how Wong establishes himself in Chungking Express as "an archetypical director-flâneur, [a] cinematic detective of urban-life, if you will, on the streets of Hong Kong in the age of globalization." Not only in Chungking Express but in all of his films except Ashes of Time, Wong's characters stroll aimlessly through urban settings like dandies. And like dandies, they are neither opposed to their capitalist environment nor fully integrated into it but "play the game" of urban life in a strangely indifferent way, developing, equally like dandies, an unreal, dreamlike mode of existence.»
L 'Amour impossible is the title of a novel written by one of the foremost 19' century dandies, the French writer Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. L 'Amour impossible could also be the title of almost all of Wong Kar-wai's films. Tsung-yi-Huang has shown how Wong establishes himself in Chungking Express as "an archetypical director-flâneur, [a] cinematic detective of urban-life, if you will, on the streets of Hong Kong in the age of globalization." Not only in Chungking Express but in all of his films except Ashes of Time, Wong's characters stroll aimlessly through urban settings like dandies. And like dandies, they are neither opposed to their capitalist environment nor fully integrated into it but "play the game" of urban life in a strangely indifferent way, developing, equally like dandies, an unreal, dreamlike mode of existence.»
(fragmente din Films and Dreams de Thorsten Botz-Borstein, Lexington Books, 2008)
P.S.: Imaginile sunt din Happy Together şi sunt alese de mine.