As Tears Go By

Andy Lau is a hood who has no time for life, just brief respites. His last girl friend had her pregnancy terminated before even telling him about it, because he hadn't called in a while. "You could have called me!" he says, but three years with him have yielded her neither money nor marriage. So he gets drunk and comes home to his bare apartment where his distant cousin, Maggie Cheung is staying while doctors run tests to see if she is going to die. Then she turns out to be ok, and goes home, while he stays and deals with the gangs of Hong Kong, particularly his inept "little brother" Jacky Cheung, and the competing gangs, and the ugly messiness that is his life.

Then he shows up at Miss Cheung's. When he has to go back to Hong Kong to deal with Jacky's messes, she says nothing, but calls his phone service and leaves a message. "Come back safely."

Kar-Wai Wong's first feature as a director can be viewed as a gloss on Melville's LE SAMOURAI, but it is not an admiring one. Lau is all professional when dealing in the underworld, but outside of it he needs to be human, wants family and love, things barred to him by his trade. Melville's romantic impulses are based on violence, the thought of the smooth, dangerous man in a beautiful and clean world populated by elegant adults, like a shark swimming through the clean ocean. Wong's world is crowded and garish ad ugly, populated by psychopaths and would-be psychopaths. Wong's sense of beauty lies in the respites, in Miss Cheung's arms, in people who care. I find it far more believable.

No better one day film school can be found in watching "Mean Streets" and then this.

Superficially they seem the same and Kar-Wai has told us that he patterned this, his first feature after Scorsese's first.

Here's the lesson: Scorsese belongs to a school of thinking where actors create characters, real extreme and powerful characters. These characters literally create the situations around them. The filmmaker's job is to attach the camera to the characters. Nearly all Italian and Italian-American filmmakers believe this. This is fine if you can live on espresso, but most of us in a film life need something to sustain us.

Kar-Wai in his later films is clearly in another camp. He literally starts with no script. He creates a cinematic tone. Into that tone is spun a place and his actors are expected to find their way within it. Only then do we see characters, and the camera is never, ever glued to personalities.

It is a world of difference, as different as people who can talk only about other people contrasted to those who can create another world in a conversation.

Sooner or later, all lucid watchers must make a choice about how big their film universe can be. This was Kar-Wai's beginning. It is hard to see unless you know his later stuff. But it is there, like the pollen in the air.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Wong Kar Wai's debut effort as a feature film director already showcase flashes of talent from the would-be auteur. ALthough not as groundbreaking or innovative as some of his better known films (eg. Chungking Express/ Fallen Angels), nevertheless it displayed some of his distinct signature styles, (eg. naturalistic & idiosyncratic dialogue, character driven films) and themes(eg. love,urban environment, world in turmoil and chaos)

Obviously inspired by Martin Scorsese's early effort 'Mean Streets', which was in turn partly inspired by 'beat' filmmaker John Cassevetes debut film 'Shadows'; 'As Tears Go by' is 'Mean streets' set in Hong Kong. The harsh depiction of traid and street gang culture is in sharp contrast to the stylish gun-totting hoods from John Woo's 'A Better Tomorrow'. In many ways, Wong's depiction came accross as more bittingly realistic, helped by its many on-location filming (another WKW style). Hong Kong's neon lit streets/dark dingy alleys/fluorescence interiors/late night piers, blended in perfectly with Wong's story set in contemporary urban HK. Very interesting camera work and lighting that is different from the other HK films coming out from that era. It displayed an early WKW visual flare, again evident in Chunking Express and Fallen Angels, which utilizes similar locations and settings, as well as ferentic camera movements and stylised composition. Credit should be due to art director Chang Shu Ping, who collaborated with Wong in all of his subsequent films. Of note too is cinematographer Andrew Lau, who will go on to helm the 'Young & Dangerous' series that bears several visual & subject matter influences from this film.Though I must add that Young & Dangerous portrayal of heroic gansters is more glorifying than Wong's pathetic bloodied characters.

Excellant performances from all three leads, which bagged Jacky CHeung(doing a Robert de niro) the best supporting actor and Andy Lau a nomination for best actor at that year's HK film awards. Maggie Chueng claimed that this was the first time she discovered the true potential of screen acting. Also unforgettable is Alex Man's supporting turn as the most sadistic villian imaginable.

'As Tears go By' is probably the only WKW film that is fully scripted (WOng served as a scriptwriter in other generic HK movies for several years before this effort), and it shows. Some clever and subtle original touches in the first act, that translates Scorsese's tortured characters and ethnic Itlian dispora to local HK flavor and motivations. However, the conflict dragged on by the second act, and the film seems indecisive as whether to focus on the Andy Lau/Maggie Cheung love story arc or on his dillema with his understudy pal Jacky Cheung and their conflict with bad ass Alex Man. Scorsese's 'Mean Streets' works because it manages to stay focus on the main protaganist POV and motivations. The whole film is centered around Harvey Keitel's character, and the other characters serves as his burden to his climb up the mafia ranks. That direction seems lost in Wong's version. The last act/conclusion seems rushed, cliche and definitely predictable. What I suspect, and logically seems plausible, is the interference of the producers and financiers on 'As Tears go by'. WOng had claimed in interviews that his early work was being hampered in many ways by others, hence his firm decision and insistence to be the producer in all his subsequent films. He wants to and achieves total artistic control over all of his later films.

Nevertheless, 'As Tears Go by' is without a doubt a milestone of WOng's career as well as Hong Kong cinema. The visceral on-screen violence, realistc seedy portrayal of HK's underworld and streets locale, and cosmopolitan loves and relationships was never before seen on HK screens during its day. It is preceded only by John Woo's 'A Better Tomorrow', which in many ways is a different kind of film with very different themes. Definitely worth catching for fans of Wong Kar Wai and those who love Hong Kong cinema.

7/10 from me.

When it comes to Gangster movies, only the romantic lens of Kar Wai Wong could result in a movie that features a couple captured in loving embrace on its DVD cover and a title befitting a melodramatic sob-fest as opposed to the blood-thirsty, violent display that it actually aspires to be. Awash with a heavy-handed eighties synth-rock soundtrack that does absolutely nothing for the film some twenty years onwards, As Tears Go By is the byproduct of a director being given the reigns for the very first time and quite naturally, not quite knowing how to implement the hundreds of ideas that he has brewing around in his brain. Indeed, while much of the script is very barebones material drawing heavily influences from Scorsese's Mean Streets amongst other higher-budget Hollywood features, it is Wong's frantic, almost schizophrenic pacing and storytelling that gives it a voice of its own. Sure, it's a voice that at this point in time is still very much in its infancy—awkward and stilted—yet you can nevertheless see where the director was going with this, his directorial debut.

Telling the story of two Triad "brothers" as they battle the passions of themselves and those around them, As Tears Go By is an interesting take on the already well-established gangster movie format. Inherent here are the typical staples; the partners at odds with each other, one a young hot-headed blood-thirsty shark looking to go places and his Big Brother, a cool, laid-back veteran with little to no ambition. Brought together, the two end up at odds with other gangsters and loan sharks who consistently threaten death upon both of them should they fail to make ends meet. This tangent which naturally plays out as nine tenths of Wong's story here, bounces back and forth between genuinely compelling action and frustratingly caricaturist drama that seems to repeat itself every twenty minutes. Indeed, if there is any fault to As Tears Go By at all, it exists in Wong's insistence in elaborate, almost inconsequential set-pieces that are fun to watch the first or second time, but wear thin after you realize not much else is happening.

On the other side of the pond however lies a romantic subplot that has given As Tears Go By and indeed Wong himself their names in the cinematic landscape. Centering around the older brother and his passionate affair with his distant cousin who comes to stay for a while, the love story here as it is displayed, is fine and one can understand how audiences may have been moved by its appearance here within an otherwise stoic and bloody display of testosterone, yet suffocated by so much of said action, nothing much is achieved from this deviation. The result is something more akin to a distraction than a truly compelling romance; indeed, while many claim the scene which adorns the DVD cover (which depicts the two in a passionate kiss inside a phone booth) to be representative of Wong's romanticist indulgences that would permeate much of his later career as a film-maker, its initial appearance here is tepid at best. Instead I point to the movie's closing sequence as its most affirming and memorable; it's not exactly a typical Wong depiction, yet it's startling, moving and even just a little bit romantic at the same time too.

In the end, while As Tears Go By stands as a significant and interesting insight into a director's early footsteps in directorial shoes, much of the feature stands as too half-baked in areas that matter most and overly heavy-handed in areas which only lead to grating and often confusing indulgences. Sure enough, the performances are fine and the movie itself exists as a fair enough take on an already done-to-death genre, yet burdened with a fairly straight-forward script that caters very little to Wong's subtler strengths as a director (which he would find a decade on), much of this debut is rendered a mere artifact of curiosity for those interested; those looking for a genuinely thrilling, or enjoyable movie however should stay clear—As Tears Go By certainly has its moments, but lacks the connective tissue to bind it all together.

Kar-Wai's first film is more in line with the cinematography of other late 80's Hong Kong movies rather than his renown obscure style, seen later on in films like Chungking Express or In the Mood For Love. The characters are also normal in comparison to his later films too, as they take on archetypes seen in many Triad flicks from this era. The writing is classic Wong Kar-Wai however, and what he does with the characters is more interesting then their personalities themselves. In other words their actions speak volumes louder than their dialogue. Andy Lau plays a low-level Triad thug who in hopes of climbing the underworld's ranks becomes held down by his younger brother played by Jacky Cheung. The pair work well together and you begin to like the dynamic bond between them. Trouble ensues between the pair and their gang, and many hard decisions await Andy Lau as he tries to straighten out both his reckless brother and forbidden romance on the side. The ending has a real impact and Wong Kar-Wai's direction is responsible for such a memorable story. Although it feels Kar-Wai wasn't fully at the reigns of this one with some mediocre moments, overall his efforts can be felt wholeheartedly and the passion shines through to deliver a good experience. -7/10