If “As Tears Go By” was Wong Kar-Wai’s way into film-making via studio imposed populist melodrama, than “Days of Being Wild” was his inner auteurist shaking off the guilt. Filled with soon-to-be-textbook Wai moodiness – all exotic camerawork, indecipherable character motivations, and rumba on the soundtrack – Wai’s handful of good looking, lonely characters in 60’s Hong Kong placate their sexual desires and selfishness with one baffling, aching, monumental life decision after another, switching partners, jobs, and countries in an endless search for a happiness that remains utterly elusive. A fine companion piece, as the director often notes in interviews, with the later “In the Mood for Love” and, to a lesser extent, “2046”.