A Wong Kar-wai film made during a lull in the production of his far more ambitious Ashes of Time. The imitation-Godard (early-Godard) shooting style -- off-the-cuff, on-the-run -- scares up plenty of local atmosphere (cluttered, clattering Hong Kong) and plenty of individual idiosyncrasy: the whirling-dervish dance of a fast-food vendor to the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'," the blond wig and dark glasses of a sort of serial femme fatale, the lovelorn cop who uses the expiration dates on canned pineapple as markers of his personal era of loneliness, and another lone cop who makes conversation with his soap and towel. Of any number of high-toned descriptive adjectives that could defensibly be applied to Wong's vision of modern romance or lack of same -- absurdist, fatalistic, existential, philosophical, lyrical, et al. -- all are outweighed in the final analysis by a lower-toned one: cutesy. With Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Faye Wang. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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