(1991) “I used to think a minute could pass so quickly. But actually, it can take forever.” A love-’em-and-leave-’em playboy (the late Hong Kong super-star Leslie Cheung, who counted this among his favorite roles) saunters up to a snack bar, pops open a cold Coke and proceeds to seduce the girl behind the counter — an innocent-looking Maggie Cheung (later star of Wong’s Ashes of Time and In the Mood For Love, etc.). But when their minute passes, he moves on to bar hostess Mimi (Carina Lau), only to leave her when he gets a tip on where to track down the birth mother who’d abandoned him as a child, while Maggie wanders the nocturnal back streets of Hong Kong, bending the sympathetic ear of lonely cop Andy Lau. A heady brew of romance and nostalgia (even appropriating the HK title for Rebel without a Cause), Days was veteran screenwriter Wong Kar-Wai’s second film as director, but the first to reveal Hong Kong-based Australian Christopher Doyle, who would shoot all of the director’s subsequent films. After the success of his first feature, a straightforward gangster love story, Wong’s producer financed Days knowing nothing more than the film’s title and that its cast featured six rising young movie stars. But, as Wong recalled, Hong Kong’s film distributors “all fainted” when they saw the completed work. The critics, though, kvelled; Days went on to win five HK Film Awards — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Art Direction — and still turns up regularly on best-ever Hong Kong movie lists. “Utterly ravishing to watch. No other director in the world graces the screen with so many exquisite looking actors and actresses.” – John Powers. “Some kind of masterpiece. . . A brilliant dream of Hong Kong life in 1960.” – Tony Rayns, Time Out (London). Approx. 94 minutes.
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