Days of Being Wild
Days of Being Wild • 1h 35m
Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 1990 • Hong Kong
Starring Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing, Andy Lau Tak Wah, Maggie Cheung Man Yuk
The breakthrough sophomore feature by Wong Kar Wai represents the first full flowering of his swooning signature style. The initial entry in a loosely connected, ongoing cycle that includes IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE and 2046, this ravishing existential reverie is a dreamlike drift through the Hong Kong of the 1960s in which a band of wayward twentysomethings—including a disaffected playboy (Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing) searching for his birth mother, a lovelorn woman (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk) hopelessly enamored with him, and a policeman (Andy Lau Tak Wah) caught in the middle of their turbulent relationship—pull together and push apart in a dance of frustrated desire. The director’s inaugural collaboration with both cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who lends the film its gorgeously gauzy, hallucinatory texture, and actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai, who appears briefly in a tantalizing teaser for a never-realized sequel, DAYS OF BEING WILD is an exhilarating first expression of Wong’s trademark themes of time, longing, dislocation, and the restless search for human connection.
Up Next in Days of Being Wild
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DAYS OF BEING WILD Alternate Version
This digital transfer of a 35 mm print of DAYS OF BEING WILD features an altered prologue sequence and different edits during the final scenes of the film.
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Christopher Doyle on DAYS OF BEING WILD
In this edited footage from a 2005 appearance at the National Film Theatre in London, cinematographer Christopher Doyle discusses his craft and recalls his work on DDAYS OF BEING WILD.
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Maggie Cheung Man Yuk on DAYS OF BEIN...
These illustrated excerpts from an August 1994 British Film Institute audio interview with Maggie Cheung Man Yuk feature the actor discussing her work in DAYS OF BEING WILD.
