by Julian Wood
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Tony Leung, Leslie Cheung
Intro:
... hollows out the possibility of communicating real intimacy and leaves only the poetics of the anxious mundane. Still, it’s mesmerizing in the most cinematic of ways.
Hong Kong master Wong Kar-Wai is regarded by many cineastes as one of the greatest stylists of his generation. This 1997 film is his Great Gay Love story, and was the entrée for what was to come with his masterpiece, In the Mood for Love – both shot by the incomparable Australian expat Christopher Doyle, in one of the great creative partnerships.
Two Chinese gay lovers in Hong Kong decide to up sticks and go on a trip to Argentina. They arrive in Buenos Aires and, still looking for something (they don’t know what), they mooch around their apartment and wonder how they are going to make it all work. Lai (the charismatic Tony Leung) decides to get a job in a local Tango bar. His lover Ho (Leslie Cheung) waits for him to come back.
The film feels very contained, and even claustrophobic, as all we have is these two trapped lovers and their bickering. The story really goes nowhere, but then, perhaps, that is true of loving relationships anyway.
Wong has a great eye for the poetry hidden in the everyday. For some, that will be enough. At another level, the love story doesn’t fully work though. Apparently, Tony Leung (a matinee idol in Hong Kong) did not realise that it was a gay love story until he arrived for the shoot (he was given a doctored script). This detail shouldn’t matter but somehow it hollows out the possibility of communicating real intimacy and leaves only the poetics of the anxious mundane. Still, it’s mesmerizing in the most cinematic of ways. Film lovers and completists will want to witness this much-lauded film on the big screen.
