Days of Being Wild

1991 Drama

Following up on his debut As Tears Go By, master filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai directs this dark, brooding tale about identity and unrequited love. Set in 1960, the film center of the young, boyishly handsome Yuddy (Leslie Cheung), who learns from the drunken ex-prostitute who raised him that she is not his real mother. Hoping to hold onto him, she refuses to divulge the name of his real birth mother. The revelation shakes Yuddy to his very core, unleashing a cascade of conflicting emotions. Two women have the bad luck to fall for Yuddy. One is a quiet lass who works at a sport arena named Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung), while the other is a glitzy showgirl named Mimi (Carina Lau). Perhaps due to his unresolved Oedipal issues, he passively lets the two compete for him, unable or unwilling to make a choice. As Lizhen slowly confides her frustration to a cop named Tide (Andy Lau), he falls for her. The same is true for Yuddy's friend Zeb (Jacky Cheung), who falls for Mimi. Later, Yuddy learns of his birth mother's whereabouts and heads out to the Philippines. This film won a armful of trophies at the Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Director, Best Actor for Leslie Cheung, and Best Picture. more..

Director: Wong Kar Wai

Starring: Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung

Reviews

  • As he (Wong Kar-wai) floods the screen with beauty and fills the soundtrack with hypnotic rhythms, he forges a filmmaking style of incomparable eroticism.

    Manohla Dargis - The New York Times

    19 January 2013

  • Its themes of passion, heartbreak and the inexorable passage of time are eternal.

    Desson Thomson - The Washington Post

    19 January 2013

  • Days of Being Wild shows Wong discovering his own cinematic language, and he's as astonished as we are.

    Ty Burr - The Boston Globe

    19 January 2013

  • Sometimes cinema's highest achievements become clear only in retrospect. Days of Being Wild--now clearly revealed as one of the peaks of Hong Kong filmmaking and a masterwork of contemporary cinema giant Wong.

    Michael Wilmington - The Chicago Tribune

    19 January 2013

Awards

  • Best Hong Kong Film of Past 10 Years

    Golden Bauhinia Awards (1997)

  • Best Director

    Golden Horse Film Festival (1991)

  • Best Actor

    Hong Kong Film Awards (1991)