Wong Kar Wai

The Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar Wai was born in Shanghai on July 17, 1958, but when he was only five years old he moved with his mother to Hong Kong, then a British colony, which is why he has always considered himself a Hong Konger. Behind him were his father, a hotel manager, and two brothers. Since Madarin was spoken in the first city and Cantonese in the other, he would end up knowing both languages ​​plus English. This was also helped by going with his mother to the movie theaters. In 1980 he graduated in graphic arts from the Hong Kong Polytechnic, and interested in audiovisual storytelling, he enrolled in the TVB Production Course organized by the city’s television. He would go on to work there as a full-time screenwriter.

In the mid-80s he began working for Alan Tang, a producer at The Wing Scope and In-gear companies. Tang precisely supports him in his first film as a director, As Tears Go By (1988), a powerful story of brothers that included Andy Lau and Maggie Cheung in the cast , and where Wong Kar Wai already pointed out stylish manners and mastery of cinematographic storytelling. . Before, his name had appeared as a screenwriter in a dozen various films.

Tang produced his next film for him, Days of Being Wild (1991), where the nostalgia that oozes his entire filmography is already evident, with themes such as the identity crisis or feelings of orphanhood. She repeats with Lau and Cheung, and other prestigious actors with whom she will repeat, such as Tony Leung, join her films. It also has his usual director of photography, the great Christopher Doyle .

The narrative complexity with diverse points of view, the dazzling preciousness, the slow-motion images, the captivating music, are part of Ashes of Time Redux (1994), a unique ‘wusia’ film, that subgenre of action and martial arts typical of China. Of course, it did not quite fit in with the usual canons, and in fact the director brought it back for a new release in 2009. The same year as Ashes of Time, he delivered a more contemporary film, perhaps his first great film, Chungking Express , which Follow the love tribulations of two police friends.

Anyone with eyes in their heads knows that Wong Kar Wai is a contemporary poet of the image, creator of a special “mood”, an indefinable atmosphere that permeates each frame of his films. He also helps the way he shoots, with a non-closed script, allowing the plots to develop during filming. This is seen in Fallen Angels (1995), about a professional assassin who never meets his partner, where the protagonist’s work is not as important as the disenchantment and deep longing for love of “the fallen angels” that swarm on the screen. . Two years later, he surprises by narrating a story of oriental homosexuals in Argentina with tango as a backdrop, Happy Together . The film would mean for Kar Wai the award for best director at Cannes.

The new millennium brings Wong Kar Wai’s masterpiece, the timeless In The Mood For Love , a chaste love story between a man and a woman who are cheated on by their respective spouses. A particular communion of feelings is produced between them, embodied in an incomparable way with photography, music and actors in a state of grace, Tony Leung –awarded at Cannes– and Maggie Cheung, the ensemble is an unmitigated masterpiece on love, which is plunges straight into the heart of the beholder. The film would have a kind of continuation, also fascinating but inferior, 2046 (2004). When, on the occasion of this film, I told him that some described him as cryptic, he replied that he would take it “as a compliment.”

In 2005 he joined forces with the old maestro Michelangelo Antonioni and with Steven Soderbergh in Eros , where each director tells a story of torn love. Also, being so well known internationally, he is required to film prestigious commercials, like the one he directs for BMW. He also considers himself the challenge of shooting his first film in English, and he does so with My Blueberry Nights (2007), in which he gives the leading role to the singer Norah Jones , in her debut as an actress, accompanied by other more popular actors such as Jude Law and Natalie Portman. The stories about the confusion in love are wonderfully articulated around a cafeteria. A prestigious title, it was appreciated above all by the film lovers of the Hong Kong director, who understood his poetic universality, put to the test by the challenge of changing languages, settings, actors.

Wong Kar Wai turns over and over again to the great question of the human being, the mystery of love. And he explained to me in an interview that it is “too big a subject. In front of him we are only beginners. It is impossible to give answers, rather the only thing we can do is provide various possibilities.” Regarding his personal case, there is not much data on how he is doing in love, although his wife is called Esther and he has a son, Qing, born in 1994.