Mamiyaroid 14

Wong Kar Wai Light

Nov 25, 2020

Film at Lincoln Center is running a digital Wong Kar Wai festival starting November 25 (today, Wednesday). Includes the In the Mood for Love trilogy, and his other films. I’m eager to catch up on ones I missed!

For today’s newsletter I revised an essay I wrote about In the Mood for Love and 2046

And following that are low light photos. One of the hallmarks of Wong Kar Wai and cinematographer, Christopher Doyle’s, collaboration is low light nighttime scenes.

This, from Days of Being Wild, is one of the most enigmatic endings I’ve ever seen.

Untitled, written in 2017

The third time I watched 2046, I saw it alone in the theater. I was proud I understood when Bai Ling asks, “Shei-ah?”

When Tony Leung’s Chow Mo Wan tries to woo her with a gift of silk stockings, to apologize for making her the butt of a joke, Bai Ling refuses him by repeating, wo bu yao, her tone mostly petulant, sometimes teasing, and finally relenting.

Bai Ling in 2046 is a dissolute and abject character, but because Zhang Ziyi is a beautiful actress, she is tragic instead of pathetic, the way a peony just past its bloom is romantic. Chow Mo Wan is a man who’s gone cold after losing his heart to Su Li Zhen during In the Mood for Love.

When I watched 2046 for the fifth time, to fact check this essay, I realized I thought Bai Ling said, bao zhe wo (hold me), but it was Chow Mo Wan’s love doppelganger, Su Li Zhen, who says it. When I thought Bai Ling said hold me, I was going to write, if you have to ask, you’re asking to have your heart broken, but Su Li Zhen says it because she knows she’s going to walk away, so she risks nothing by giving him a piece of what he already wants.

A week before Chinese New Year I called my mother in Taiwan. She asked me what I was cooking to celebrate, and I said I was making hot pot for my sister and niece on New Year’s Eve. She said I should buy bao xin cai— Chinese cabbage. This was not only suitable for the hot pot, but as she explained, on the New Year, it is auspicious for romantic couples to eat bao xin cai because the word bao is a homonym for embrace, and xin means heart.

On Valentine’s Day, my Chinese teacher taught us the phrase “Valentine’s Day” in Chinese and said, if you take the words individually, qing ren jie translates to emotion person festival. If I didn’t have a child’s vocabulary, I wouldn’t note this, because the links between individual words would be so seamless as to be invisible.

You could say that Chow Mo Wan breaks Bai Ling’s heart but it’s more accurate to say that he refused to heal what was already broken. The last time they see each other, she tells him that she looked for him on Christmas Eve, the year before. He makes light of it by eliding the fact that they were lovers and says that they’re drinking buddies, of course she missed him.

My mother has an idiom for every heartbreak. Not long after watching 2046 for the fourth time with a new prospect, already soured, she taught me, na dou qi, huang dou xia—What you suddenly pick up, you can quickly put down.

When Chow Mo Fan leaves Bai Ling for the last time, he drifts off into the future, slumped over and alone, in a taxi where he had once shared close quarters with the first Si Li Zhen—the woman who ruined him for love—and later Bai Ling—the woman he ruined in turn. It should be obvious you don’t fall for broken men or women if you don’t want to be broken in turn, but if you guard your heart too closely, you risk never loving at all.

Mamiya RZ 67, 120 film, lomo 400

As you can guess, I adore low light photography. I’ve since broken the colored lamp above, so I bought a plastic orb that changes color.