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A glowing curved reflection for the first image of Wong Kar-wai's first film, a wall of TV screens on a display window like a portal into the netherworld of mooks and dreamers. Neon is slashed into swathes of color and ceremonial music emanates from boomboxes in this Hong Kong, the denizens have monikers like Snooker King or Bigmouth Kay or Mr. Fish Balls. The triad enforcer (Andy Lau) has his hands full with the protégé (Jacky Cheung) whose full-time job is to get into bloody scrapes, even the local godfather has had enough: "Straighten him out, he's like a time bomb!" On the other end is the provincial young cousin (Maggie Cheung) whose weak lungs and melancholy gaze promise fragile escape from gangland dead-ends. A Demy strain running through A Better Tomorrow terrain—protagonist and filmmaker alike suspended between violent macho bluff and unguarded swoons, knockout set-pieces register the yin and yang of it. Revenge is a blade slashing through a smear of fluorescent filters and smoky slow-mo, romance is a jukebox blasting "Take My Breath Away" in Cantonese while the shimmer from a first kiss literally blinds the camera's eye. (Burning reverie is the mode for both occasions.) Characters either sprinting or lounging, the Wong ephemerality already in full swing. "I never think about next time," says the antihero, yet a brush with a former girlfriend in the middle of a downpour hits him with the weight of the past, "future" is a crimson sign blazing against a nocturnal blue sky. The hidden glass, a certain orange flavor (cp. Hou's Goodbye South, Goodbye), melted ice cubes like so many tears in a bucket. Bullets fly dutifully between fraternal gangsters, yet the auteur is more interested in discovering the heavenly spectacle of Maggie Cheung ascending a flight of stairs. With Alex Man, Ronald Wong, Kau Lam, and Ang Wong.
--- Fernando F. Croce |