TUK fest puts Jakarta in the mood for Wong

By Risa Permanadeli

JAKARTA (JP): His name was almost drowned out by the clamor from Ang Lee's glorious success in Hollywood with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the winner of four Oscars and the first Asian world box-office hit.

But when Cannes invited Hong Kong director Wong-Kar Wai to become one of the teaching staff for the Lecon du Cinema program -- a special program at the Cannes Film Festival to introduce the cinematographic style of a charismatic figure in the film world -- then it was more than just appropriate to make mention of Wong.

It is not only because of the honor of his participation in the festival, but he is an Asian movie-making trend-setter in his own right. His place in world filmdom is being recognized in Jakarta in July, first at a festival earlier this month at Bentara Budaya and now from Friday to Sunday at Teater Utan Kayu (TUK).

Starting from his Chungking Express, the European cineasts acknowledged that here was a name to be reckoned with. Then in 1997 at Cannes he was awarded the Best Director trophy for his work in Happy Together. The year 2000 further cemented his name in the film public's mind through In The Mood For Love, which won the Cesar trophy -- the top honor in the best foreign film category -- and also Tony Leung's Cannes Festival victory as best actor in the film's leading male role.

There is nothing ordinary about Wong Kar Wai precisely when he tells of seemingly ordinary matters. Happy Together and In The Mood For Love are two extraordinary exemplars.

The first portrays with pathos a homosexual couple lost in the darkness of their love affair taking place in distant Argentina.

The "tango philosophy", which maintains that a tango dancer will not make a wrong step once he realizes the heart-rending intricacies of love, pulsates throughout the celluloid images.

It is shot in black and white, an artistically clever option that shows life is not always "colorful". In Wong's visual language, reality is always refiltered, as expressed in the entirely somber and dismal tones.

Set against the backdrop of Hong Kong in the 1960s, In the Mood for Love has a man and a woman embark on an extramarital affair and having to wade into the pitch-black waves of love.

It utilizes the barongsai and liong (lion and dragon) dances as metaphors. The wounded barongsai, along with the film's slow rhythm, emphasizes the lengthy, poignant suffering of their affairs, yet the steps must remain correct and the liong head must be held upright to complete the dance.

Love, that commonly used theme, to Wong Kar Wai is always ambiguous, as it is built on two emotional pillars: the love itself and its poignancy. So love a la Wong Kar Wai is not bombarded by lust, let alone by possessive instincts, while poignancy does not cause floods of tears or, worse, a sprawled near-death-like state. Love then is not a simple "to be or not to be" matter, but merely a piece of life's reality. The ambiguity of love and life is transformed as a strength for both the love as well as the accompanying poignancy.

Regular body movements and gestures, like footsteps, and the choice of music artistically and emphatically form his play on ambiguity.

Particularly memorable is the accompaniment of Richard Galliano to Tony Leung strolling along Buenos Aires' streets in Happy Together, and the lyrical music chosen for Tony Leung's and Maggie Cheung's footsteps in In The Mood For Love.

Footsteps in rhythm to the purposely repeated music remind us that body and emotions seen through Wong Kar Wai's lens originate from his different perceptions of life.

Love does not grow from an emptiness, and foremost the body is not the instrument of the mind or the emotions merely for the sake of filling the vacuum. Wong's love stories are definitely Utopian romanticism but never phantasmagorical.

The body and the emotions in Wong Kar Wai's interpretations of life are very non-Western and simultaneously very non- psychoanalytical. When love in films generally gets easily trapped in the Freudian banalization process, it is not so with Wong Kar Wai.

The hurt returns but not just in ordinary repetitions. Here repetition is also not another version of an "eternal return". To Wong, repetition means the willingness to be aware that in the same motions of the feelings there is always an inner firmness. And within that firmness there is always the possibility to continue life's journey.

Clearly his cinematographic language differs from Ang Lee's and Yang Zimou's, two Asian directors who have made their names in the western film world. Moreover, if a comparison must be made with the narrating style of Hollywood's directors, Wong Kar Wai's is immediately that of an unidentifiable alien belonging to an unclear category.

And because he is not lumped in the category of typical directors, Wong-Kar Wai simply becomes Wong-Kar Wai himself. Perhaps that is why his name is worth more than just a mention.

-- The Wong Kar-Wai Film Week is at Teater Utan Kayu, Jl. Utan Kayu 68H, East Jakarta (Phone: 8573388). Screenings begin on Friday with Days of Being Wild (1991) at 4:30 p.m. and Ashes of Time (1994), 7 p.m. On Saturday, Chungking Express (1994) at 4:30 p.m., Fallen Angels (1995), 7 p.m. On Sunday, Happy Together (1997), 2:30 p.m., In the Mood for Love (2000), 4:30 p.m. There will also be a discussion with Ali-Ono, 7 p.m.