Days of Being Wild has two modes of storytelling: melancholic contemplation and uncontrolled passion. The film mostly sticks to the former, but at times bursts into fits of fiery intensity. Everyone in its small cast of characters is yearning after something. In the moment that seems to be romance or affection, but it's also often something more soulful and primordial, something they lost long ago that they can't attain, that they're searching after. The look and feel of the film is quite lovely at conveying this; director Wong Kar Wai is wonderful at composing imagery that's evocative and gorgeous yet very understated. The film's story is also part and parcel with this minimalism often being elliptical and brief (There are random inner monologues that seem to come out of nowhere and nearly everyone gets at least one detailing massive amounts of information in tiny clips of time). But the the information put across in these small windows is rich, moody and at times thoroughly erotic. Set in the 1960's Hong Kong -- mostly to align with the sexual revolution -- Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) is a young, frustrated man who has unbridled passions that he unleashes on two very different unsuspecting women (Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau) -- both of whom he's withholding towards even as he clearly has feelings for them. Meanwhile he's confronting the discovery that the woman that raised him isn't actually his biological mother -- an irascible, hard to please spinster -- which only serves to make his outbursts all the more unpredictable and explosive.
Grade: A-
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