Film Talk // California dreaming

In Wong Kar-Wai's film Chungking Express, he explores ideas of love and the passing of time. While most films are made in about a year, Wong produced Chungking Express in two months. He had spare time because of production delays for another film so he decided to make another one while he waited. The short production time produced an interesting sense of youthful impulse. Free from premeditated planning, Wong produced a film that exudes a kind of liberating force - one that completed scripts and pre-production can easily spoil.

This spontaneity recalls the same of-the-moment feeling that Godard's film Breathless had. Both directors just picked up a camera and shot enigmatic and attractive young actors with a bare script to guide them. The end results in two of the most compelling and unexpectedly insightful films about life, love, time and people.

Even two of the female leads are so similar. Both have pixie haircuts, a feminine symbol of self-assurance, and both possess this undefined way of enthralling and mesmerising the audience and the men they attract.

Watch this clip of Faye Wong dancing to California Dreamin'. Don't you see a bit of Jean Seberg in there?

This is a repost from my previous blog, FILM MUSIC ART

Three Reasons // In The Mood For Love

Directed by Wong Kar-Wai

Food represents so much in the film. The pair pass by each other on the way to the noodle stand - they go there when their adulterous spouses are away, when they want a lonely meal for themselves. Sesame syrup becomes a representation of romantic generosity. A touch of mustard evokes husbandly tenderness and care. When the two are eating together, it is when they are the most intimate since they never physically or sexually act on their obvious attraction for one another. 

The characters are so well-dressed and put together. There's not a hair out of place - they look like they belong in an episode of Mad Men. But their perfect outward appearance seem to magnify their inward emptiness and make their tragic circumstance seem more melancholic. 

Usually in films exploring adultery, the focus is on the adulterers. Not in this film. The camera refuses to even capture their faces and in instances when they do enter the frame, it is very brief. Wong Kar-Wai makes it clear that this is not their story.

What are your reasons?

This is a repost from my previous blog, FILM MUSIC ART