BIOGRAPHY
Wong's current nostalgic artsy style took shape during his apprenticeship with Alan Tang Kwong-Wing, who invested in the first movie Wong directed, As Tears Go By (1988). Wong's career took off when he directed the film Days of Being Wild (1990), despite losing Alan Tang millions of invested dollars. Wong 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.
He considers Final Victory (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, also produced by Alan Tang. A crime melodrama of the kind then hugely popular, it heavily borrowed from Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (malas calles) (1974), but already displayed one of Wong's principal trademarks in its atmospheric and sometimes expressionistic color palette.
His next film, Days of Being Wild (1991), produced by Alan Tang, 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 of Being Wild was a box office failure but now regularly tops Hong Kong critics' polls of the best local films ever made. It has been described as a sort of Cantonese Rebel Without a Cause.
He also established his own independent production company, called Jet Tone Films Ltd. His partner in the company is Jeffrey Lau, a director and producer who tends to work closer to the populist vein of mainstream Hong Kong film.
Wong went on to direct several more feature films in the 1990s produced by Jet Tone, which allowed him to work at his own pace. Among these were Chungking Express (1994), which follows the lives of two love-struck cops in Hong Kong and the mysterious women they meet and fall in love with. Fallen Angels (1995), was originally intended to be the third act of Chungking Express, but when the tone didn't fit with the other two parts, he cut it out and made it a standalone movie instead. Nevertheless it is seen as a semi-sequel to Chungking Express as is a neo-noir film about on a disillusioned killer trying to overcome the affections of his partner, all set against a sordid and surreal urban nightscape.
His first major international recognition was at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival where he won the Best Director prize for Happy Together (1997). A film that uses an eclectic soundtrack by Argentinian maestro Astor Piazolla, Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso and Frank Zappa to chronicle the stormy affair of a gay couple living as expatriates in Buenos Aires.
Despite his background as a screenwriter, 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. It was Wong's intention to make two films, one of which would be titled Beijing Summer, 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 settle 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. 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.
Wong's 2046 (2004), a film about capturing lost memories, was the third chapter of a shared story that began with Days of Being Wild and continued with In the Mood for Love.
In 2006, he became the first Chinese director to preside the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.
Wong Kar-wai's first full English-language film, My Blueberry Nights, opened the 2007 Cannes Film Festival as one of 22 films in competition. The lead, American singer-songwriter Norah Jones, made her acting debut in the film.
Wong Kar-wai was the jury president of the 2008 edition of the Shanghai International Film Festival.
FILMOGRAPHY
* The Lady from Shanghai (2010) (pre-production)* There's Only One Sun (2007)
* To Each His Own Cinema (2007) (Segment: I Travelled 9000 km To Give It To You)
* My Blueberry Nights (2007)
* Eros (2004) (Segment: The Hand)
* 2046 (2004)
* Six Days (2002)
* The Follow (2001)
* Fa yeung nin wa / In the Mood for Love (2000)
* Hua yang de nian hua (2000)
* Chun gwong cha sit / Happy Together (1997)
* Duo luo tian shi / Fallen Angels (1995)
* Dung che sai duk / Ashes of Time (1994)
* Chung Hing sam lam / Chungking Express (1994)
* A Fei zheng chuan / Days of Being Wild (1990)
* Wong gok ka moon / As Tears Go By (1988)
