Lust Without Affection | “Days of Being Wild” Film Review and Reflection (1990)
“Days of Being Wild” is Wong Kar-wai’s sophomore effort — an aesthetically-driven, languorous follow-up to the Hong Kong auteur’s cut-throat crime drama, “As Tears Go By” (1988). Unlike its predecessor, there’s hardly any violence in “Days”, save a few romantic squabbles, the time Leslie Cheung’s character beats a guy with a hammer, and, of course, that mass brawl towards the end (okay, there is some violence). But when characters aren’t busy fighting, they’re busy flirting: listless pillow-talks, smutty banter, and bold and audacious pick-up lines permeate this masterpiece. Enough to keep even the raunchiest of cinephiles entertained.
However, the defining feature of “Days” isn’t pleasure; rather, it’s sadness. Some artists deal with oils. Some with pastels. Here, Wong paints a picture with melancholy: a subdued urban-sprawl, soaked in gauzy-green, full of loneliness, despair, and longing. The kind of place where it’s always night-time, the living situations are dismal, and it’s perpetually pouring down rain. It resembles an American noir film from the ’40s. Except this is Hong Kong set in 1960. Humphrey Bogart has been replaced with Leslie Cheung (who tragically committed suicide in 2003), and the femme fatales are nothing more than a couple of teary-eyed girls who simply want Cheung’s character to show them a little love and affection.
In the film, Cheung plays “Yuddy,” a hard-bitten playboy whose lack of occupation leaves him plenty of time to prowl around town, philander, and womanize. He’s cold, uncaring, aloof, and attracts the interest of women who stick to him like bird shit on a car roof. In other words, he’s in the heartbreaking business (and business is good!).
Before Yuddy gets involved with the spunky cabaret dancer called “Mimi” (Carina Lau), he seduces the demure shopkeeper, Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung). “You’ll see me tonight in your dreams,” he informs her. The next day, when she tells him that she didn’t, he sneers, “Of course not. You didn’t even get any sleep.” A string of verbal foreplay ensues before she is all but putty in his arms.
If you hadn’t already surmised, these relationships have quite a quick and abrupt terminus. They’re nothing more than petty dalliances against the best wishes of the female parties involved. Any prospect of marriage, any potential vulnerability, and Yuddy pushes them out the door — sometimes quite literally. You may deem him callous or misogynistic. But I’ve determined that he’s merely indifferent. His cruelty is because he’s emotionally troubled, bored, and finds fucking a lot more entertaining than smoking cigarettes in bed. It’s something to do that isn’t nothing. More specifically, it’s an escape from the endless quarrels with his foster mother and a way to stop thinking about the indelible fact that he has no idea who his real parents are — which haunts him relentlessly.
“Days” was filmed back in 1990. In the year 2023, the idea of a perfidious man “getting around” is much more taboo and far less appealing no matter how much emotional scarring and attachment issues he might possess. But gosh darn, has the bachelor lifestyle ever looked so seductive? The man behind “Days’” voluptuous visuals is cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, who took the aesthetic embryo of “As Tears Go By” and elevated it to the lush, impressionist style that we associate Wong with today. Together they would make a number of pictures, including their highly-touted “Love Trilogy,” of which “Days” is the first installment; in 2000, the duo would release “In the Mood for Love,” and in 2004, “2046” — arguably some of the most stunning and gorgeous works in all of contemporary cinema. Like “Days,” they revolve around forlorn romantic affairs, unrequited love, and the ultimate tragedy of leaving passions behind that could have blossomed into something meaningful and worthwhile. When you strip it to its bare-bones though, Wong’s “Love Trilogy” is simply about time. More precisely, lost time and the evocation and wistfulness that goes along with it. It’s about a past that “you can see but not touch.” One that forces its characters to reminisce about what could have been, but never was, on account of their own hesitancy and equivocation.
We’re reminded of this temporal element quite frequently in “Days.”Clocks can be seen fixed to walls or overhanging large gates; in one brief scene, a character is depicted going over the face of a clock with a wash rag, as if the motif wasn’t already obvious enough. There are periods in which time appears stuck and instances in which whole years go by from one scene to the next. Even Yuddy’s pickup strategies have a temporal fixation; the “one-minute friends” move is what sealed the deal between him and Li-zhen. “Would he remember that minute because of me?” Li-zhen wonders. When broached on the subject years later, Yuddy replies, “I remember what should be remembered.” Ouch.
That hard-hearted attitude encapsulates the entire film and distinguishes it from the rest of the trilogy. Ultimately, “Days of Being Wild” is a romance that contains no warmth, no gush, no tenderness, and no affection. It’s about a young man who is either too broken, too stubborn, or too bitter to realize that he’s throwing away the only chances he has at happiness, and two women who haplessly become engulfed in the tidal wave of his abject misery. Sprinkle in a couple of despondent supporting characters and you’ve got yourself one depressing picture, but one crafted according to the Wong Kar-wai standard: elegant, alluring, and breathtakingly gorgeous.
“Days of Being Wild” is currently streaming on both HBO Max and The Criterion Channel
