Days of Being Wild

Days of Being Wild (阿飛正傳, 1990) is Wong Kar-wai's breakthrough drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Set in a sweltering Hong Kong at the dawn of the 1960s, all neon glinting in puddles, it follows Yuddy, a beautiful drifter who breaks women's hearts out of pure boredom.

Yuddy learns that the woman who raised him isn't his real mother, and that crack in his past poisons everything in the present. He can't let himself stay attached. He pulls in shopgirl Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), drops her for the dancer Lulu (Carina Lau), while a quiet beat cop (Andy Lau) hovers near the woman Yuddy left behind. He keeps comparing himself to a legless bird that flies its whole life and only lands when it dies. His search for his birth mother takes him to the Philippines and brings him no peace at all.

This is where Wong found his style: Christopher Doyle's drifting camera, time as an obsession, lovers who keep just missing each other. The wordless one-minute Tony Leung cameo at the end has become the stuff of legend. Slow, hypnotic, and aching, it's for anyone willing to watch a mood instead of a plot. Stream Days of Being Wild (1990) online on iFILM.