The mother complex continues to haunt, 30 years after Motherhood (1960). Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild is in fact set in the 1960s, a work that channels longings for nostalgia into poetic expressions of oedipal anxiety and narcissistic fixations. Yuddy (Leslie Cheung at his luminous best) likens himself to a bird with no feet, which can only fly but never land, a condition he personifies in his ways with women and with his own emotions. His state of mind exemplifies a general obsession with time, best embodied by the pickup move of asking a girl (Maggie Cheung, stunningly delicate in her vulnerability) to spend with him the minute before 3 pm on April 16, 1960, a minute that goes on to tick forever in our memory. Yuddy and the girl could very well have gone on a date to see Motherhood, released a month later on May, 1960.

Courtesy of Media Asia Distribution

2/10

(Mon)

7:30pm

Cinema, Hong Kong Film Archive