peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2012 02 25 AsTearsGoBy

As Tears Go By (1988)

Sat, Feb 25, 2012./noise/movies | Link

Wong Kar-Wai's first feature. Maggie Cheung pairs off with Andy Lau, Kowloon gangster, but he chooses mates over dates and gets horribly mauled by cliché. There's some signature camera work and the beginnings of the aesthetic that took the director to the top of his game; has anyone else ever made fluorescent lighting look so good? We also get an inkling of what's to come with his treatment of Maggie and her doctor, Andy and his ex-girlfriend: the fractured relationships that show (and not merely tell) what these characters are all about. I'm not a huge Andy Lau fan but he does fine here. Andrew Lau did the cinematography.