Critics reviews

Even more than most Wong films, Days of Being Wild is a film of languor. With its scattered characters, near-absence of narrative, and staccato rhythm (long stretches of hushed conversation punctuated by violent outbursts), the movie achingly embodies a particular state of ennui in 1960s Hong Kong, as men and women listlessly weave in and out of relationships.

More than a romantic allegory for the character's own trajectory, Yuddy's story evokes an expression of the impossibility of reinventing that which has already disappeared—a pursuit which only memory and cinema can realize. With the unforgettable opening credit sequence of Days, Wong brilliantly encapsulates a history of Hong Kong into a single, precise long shot.

Wong Kar-wai's idiosyncratic style first became apparent in this gorgeously moody second feature (1991), whose romantic vision of 1960 Hong Kong as a network of unfulfilled longings would later echo through In the Mood for Love.

Arguably this is the key movie in Wong's oeuvre, as startling in its context as Hiroshima Mon Amour and Breathless were in theirs... Days is Wong's first film to have been shot by Chris Doyle, and the voluptuous shadows, neon color schemes, and underwater atmosphere of Doyle's cinematography would define Wong's elusive Hong Kong forever after.

The terrific, all-star cast enacts this as a series of emotionally unresolved encounters; the swooningly beautiful camera and design work takes its hallucinatory tone from the protagonist's own uncertainties. The mysterious appearance of Tony Leung only in the closing scene heralds a sequel that will sadly never be made. But this is already some kind of masterpiece.