Wong Kar Wai's Days of Being Wild is about a playboy P (Leslie
Cheung), who seduces and subsequently breaks the hearts of two girls, M
(Maggie Cheung), and C (Carina Lau), probably because of unresolved
mummy issues.
M is the sweet girl-next-door kind of chick. Accordingly, P starts seducing her with something very sweet:
"What do you want?"
"I want to be your friend. Look at my watch for a minute"
(M does so)
"It's a minute already, what do you want to say?"
"What day's today?"
"16th"
"16th... April the 16th. At one minute before 3pm on April the 16th, 1960, you're together with me. Because of you, I'll remember that one minute. From now on, we're friends for one minute. This is a fact, you can't deny. It's done."
Their relationship blossoms from there, until she raises the idea of marriage.
M: "Will you marry me?"
P: "No"
M: (leaving) "I'm never coming back"
Except she takes a while to get over him, with the help of a policeman A (Andy Lau). They have HTHT.
C, unlike M, is the overtly sexy kind of woman, the kind who attracts stares from other people. She is a cabaret dancer, and the first time they meet is when P has just beaten up a lover of his adoptive mother, having accused the lover of taking his adoptive mother's earrings Accordingly, P seduced her with a blend of money and being manly (essentially just expecting her to get into his car, and then expecting her to spend the night). And being physically playful. Eventually, C falls in love with him.
I suppose the two female characters serve to show that P has diverse seduction skills. He's not a one-trick playboy.
Eventually, we're shown that P has unresolved mummy issues. He's a playboy who is still relying on his adoptive mother for money. An adoptive mother who refuses to tell him who his real parents are. When she finally does, he sets off to look for his biological mum in the Philippines. He finds the house but she refuses to see him. His existence becomes meaningless because for so long he has been using his adoptive mother's refusal as an excuse for not doing anything worthwhile.
In the Philippines, he meets A, who is now working on a ship. A could not be more different. He had always wanted to work on a ship but became a policeman because he had to take care of his sick mother. It was only after his mother passed away that he went to work on a ship.
P eventually gets shot because he tried to get a passport from a gang without paying for it. But you get a sense he was taking this kind of risk because he lost his reason for living. A asks P if he remembers what happened on April 16th 1960 one minute before 3pm. Astonishingly, P does. He then says that whatever he wants to remember, he remembers forever. But he adds that if A sees M again, he should tell her that P doesn't remember anything. That way, it would be easier for everyone. There, we see that he remembers her, but he didn't want to commit, didn't want to take action, sub-consciously preferring to give in to his excuses instead of doing something worthy with his life that benefits other people. P dies in the train from the gunshot wound.
We see in the final scene that C has gone to the Philippines to look for P, not knowing that he has died. There, it shows that loving aspect of C. She can be crass, possessive, uncaring towards others, but she believes in love.
What comes out a lot in the film is the exceeding loneliness of the characters. P dies in a foreign land, and only A knows. Even his adoptive mother does not know. M has a job selling snacks at first, and then selling tickets to football games, and she mentions some relatives, but there is no scene with them. A uplifts himself to work on board a ship, seemingly without friends. C does not appear to have a life apart from seeing P and dancing at the cabaret.
Even the adoptive mother is shown to be lonely, taking a succeeding string of lovers.
The other thing that seems to be the hallmark of Wong Kar Wai are the missed connections. Like how, at the end, when M tries to call A, and no one picks up, because A has stopped being a policeman to work on a ship. The missed connections are less and less believable nowadays with the Internet and social media.
M is the sweet girl-next-door kind of chick. Accordingly, P starts seducing her with something very sweet:
"What do you want?"
"I want to be your friend. Look at my watch for a minute"
(M does so)
"It's a minute already, what do you want to say?"
"What day's today?"
"16th"
"16th... April the 16th. At one minute before 3pm on April the 16th, 1960, you're together with me. Because of you, I'll remember that one minute. From now on, we're friends for one minute. This is a fact, you can't deny. It's done."
Their relationship blossoms from there, until she raises the idea of marriage.
M: "Will you marry me?"
P: "No"
M: (leaving) "I'm never coming back"
Except she takes a while to get over him, with the help of a policeman A (Andy Lau). They have HTHT.
C, unlike M, is the overtly sexy kind of woman, the kind who attracts stares from other people. She is a cabaret dancer, and the first time they meet is when P has just beaten up a lover of his adoptive mother, having accused the lover of taking his adoptive mother's earrings Accordingly, P seduced her with a blend of money and being manly (essentially just expecting her to get into his car, and then expecting her to spend the night). And being physically playful. Eventually, C falls in love with him.
I suppose the two female characters serve to show that P has diverse seduction skills. He's not a one-trick playboy.
Eventually, we're shown that P has unresolved mummy issues. He's a playboy who is still relying on his adoptive mother for money. An adoptive mother who refuses to tell him who his real parents are. When she finally does, he sets off to look for his biological mum in the Philippines. He finds the house but she refuses to see him. His existence becomes meaningless because for so long he has been using his adoptive mother's refusal as an excuse for not doing anything worthwhile.
In the Philippines, he meets A, who is now working on a ship. A could not be more different. He had always wanted to work on a ship but became a policeman because he had to take care of his sick mother. It was only after his mother passed away that he went to work on a ship.
P eventually gets shot because he tried to get a passport from a gang without paying for it. But you get a sense he was taking this kind of risk because he lost his reason for living. A asks P if he remembers what happened on April 16th 1960 one minute before 3pm. Astonishingly, P does. He then says that whatever he wants to remember, he remembers forever. But he adds that if A sees M again, he should tell her that P doesn't remember anything. That way, it would be easier for everyone. There, we see that he remembers her, but he didn't want to commit, didn't want to take action, sub-consciously preferring to give in to his excuses instead of doing something worthy with his life that benefits other people. P dies in the train from the gunshot wound.
We see in the final scene that C has gone to the Philippines to look for P, not knowing that he has died. There, it shows that loving aspect of C. She can be crass, possessive, uncaring towards others, but she believes in love.
What comes out a lot in the film is the exceeding loneliness of the characters. P dies in a foreign land, and only A knows. Even his adoptive mother does not know. M has a job selling snacks at first, and then selling tickets to football games, and she mentions some relatives, but there is no scene with them. A uplifts himself to work on board a ship, seemingly without friends. C does not appear to have a life apart from seeing P and dancing at the cabaret.
Even the adoptive mother is shown to be lonely, taking a succeeding string of lovers.
The other thing that seems to be the hallmark of Wong Kar Wai are the missed connections. Like how, at the end, when M tries to call A, and no one picks up, because A has stopped being a policeman to work on a ship. The missed connections are less and less believable nowadays with the Internet and social media.
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