The Wake

Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai’s 1991 film “Days of Being Wild” is set in 1960, but 2005 audiences will relate to the characters’ longing for intimacy when the movie hits the Oak Street screen next week.

“Days of Being Wild” follows charming but irresponsible York through his courtships with two unfortunate women and his resentful relationship with his adoptive mother who refuses to reveal the identity of his birth parents.

York’s dissatisfaction with life is a virus that infects everyone he meets. He finds Su Lizhen, a pretty and quiet young woman, minding the counter at her sleepy concession-stand job. But soon after she falls for one of York’s clever pick-up lines, Lizhen is wound up in a malcontented daze.

Unable to live up even to Lizhen’s lowered expectations, York picks up Mimi, a bratty nightclub dancer who follows him like a stray puppy even when he ditches her to go on a dangerous international journey.

Although York’s carelessness sometimes boils over into to cruelty and he is prone to violence — he beats a man with a sledgehammer for free-loading off of his mother — those close to him constantly forgive him. It seems a ruthless friend, lover or son is better than none at all.

All of this groping for companionship takes place in the dark, and the audience is alternately voyeuristic and intrusive; some shots are obscured by a pole or a strange angle, and some thrust the actors’ faces against the screen. There is a preoccupation with clocks and watches in “Days of Being Wild,” a visual and textual manifestation of the main character’s malleable memory and perpetual need to be somewhere else.

If Maggie Cheung’s stoicism and otherworldly kung fu moves enchanted you in “Hero,” you’ll be surprised at her ability to portray an awkward, vulnerable jilted lover in this earlier work. And if you’re impressed with Wong Kar-Wai’s hushed realism in “Days of Being Wild,” you can follow up with two of his later films, “In the Mood for Love” (2000) and “2046” (2004), which continue the stories of characters Su Lizhen and Mimi.

Rumba music punctuates the restrained pace at which “Days of Being Wild” explores clumsy relationships, and a sudden action sequence near the end is a brutal climax for this meticulous film.

“Days of Being Wild” will show at Oak Street Cinema from May 13th until May 19th. Shows are at 7:30 and 9:30 nightly with Saturday matinees at 3:30 and 5:30.