When Hong Kong cinema finally reached Western audiences in the late eighties, its style was quickly and correctly categorized as a strictly commercial approach to filmmaking. Wong Kar Wai’s arrival changed everything. With the same visual tools that his peers were using to make action blockbusters, Wong started making very personal and extremely poetic films, disregarding the rules of narrative storytelling and challenging traditional Chinese mores. Few of his contemporaries have dared tackle homosexuality as directly as he did in Happy Together. From the dizzying Chungking Express to the hypnotizing In the Mood for Love, Wong’s work is incredibly modern and particularly powerful.
—Laurent Tirard
