The Filmic Bodies of Wong Kar-Wai

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The Filmic Bodies of Wong Kar-wai

Louise Malcolm

A Thesis Submitted in Fulfilment of the

Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of Arts and Media

University ofNew South Wales

August 2013 PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Malcolm

First name: Louise Other name/s: Anne

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: Arts and Media Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences

Title: The Filmic Bodies of Wong Kar-wai

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

This thesis analyses the films of Wong Kar-wai as important examples of affective film performance. It ~xp l ores the particular performative and cinematic techniques found in his work. Through the close examination of these techniques this thesis suggests how Wong creates conditions for spectators to engage bodily with performing bodies on screen.

The thesis treats film performance as a matter of film style, seeing it as always constructed through combinations of the performing body, the camera and the edit. It approaches performance on film as a filmic body; an amalgam of performative and cinematic techniques inextricably melded together.

This thesis sets up fragmentation as the key trait of Wong's film style, central to his filmic bodies and to the way spectators may engage affectively with them. In particular, the thesis addresses how multiple levels of fragmentation, both performative and cinematic, operate in concert. Visual, temporal and spatial tragmentation are analysed as central components of Wong's filmic bodies in this regard. Further, this stylistic analysis suggests a notion of affective intertextuality, based on stylistic connections between his films, as vital to how spectators can engage bodily with his filmic bodies.

This thesis works from the assumption that spectators engage with cinema in a bodily way. It contributes to a current drive in film studies to re-insert the body of the spectator into understandings of how we engage with cinema. New approaches to film performances outside the traditional concerns of representation make up a smaller part ofthis "re insertion". Through close analysis of film performance as a key element of Wong's film style this thesis aims to contribute both to debates on Wong and the affective power of performance on film.

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~~Signed .... ~ ...... Date ....{ .. ?/q.. ~ ../.(.Lf ...... ABSTRACT~~

This thesis analyses the films of Wong Kar-wai as important examples of affective film performance. It explores the particular performative and cinematic techniques found in his work. Through the close examination of these techniques this thesis suggests how Wong creates conditions for spectators to engage bodily with performing bodies on screen.

This thesis sets up fragmentation as the key trait of Wong’s film style, central to his filmic bodies and to the way spectators may engage affectively with them. In particular, the thesis addresses how multiple levels of fragmentation, both performative and cinematic, operate in concert. Visual, temporal and spatial fragmentation are analysed as central components of Wong’s filmic bodies in this regard. Further, this stylistic analysis suggests a notion of affective intertextuality, based on stylistic connections between his films, as vital to how spectators can engage bodily with his filmic bodies.

This thesis works from the assumption that spectators engage with cinema in a bodily way. It contributes to a current drive in film studies to re-insert the body of the spectator into understandings of how we engage with cinema. New approaches to film performances outside the traditional concerns of representation make up a smaller part of this “re-insertion”. Through close analysis of film performance as a key element of Wong’s film style this thesis aims to contribute both to debates on Wong and the affective power of performance on film.

~~iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS~~

First and foremost I would like to express my unending indebtedness and appreciation to my supervisor Dr Michelle Langford for her generosity, honesty and commitment in guiding me to the completion of this project. Michelle, your feedback and conversation have constantly compelled me to push myself as both a thinker and writer. Your energy, support and stamina have been invaluable and

~~I feel incredibly fortunate to have had you as my supervisor.~~

To Dr George Kouvaros, the co-supervisor of this dissertation, I extend heartfelt thanks for your readings of the thesis throughout the project. Your feedback has been vital in the shaping of this dissertation and your advice is always considered and beneficial.

Big thanks to the School of Arts and Media and the School of Education for keeping me employed and financially afloat through this process. Most especially Julie Miller, Catherine Courtenay, Nisha Vohra and Simone Pilosio.

~~Your support literally meant I had a roof over my head and food in my belly.~~

I’d like to thank my family for their patience, love and support through the years it took to complete this project. Extra special thanks goes out to my parents, Lance and Noni Malcolm. Though as the first person in my family to attend university I know you have been confused as to why I would want to stay so long, you still managed to support me through the duration.

iv Lastly, I would like to thank all the friends and housemates that have supported me through this project. In particular I would to thank fellow UNSW postgraduate Dr Megan Carrigy and irreplaceable friend Michelle Wood for their meticulous proofreading. Big thanks to Michael Green, Emma Pressman, Bruce

~~Cherry, Elliot Hughes, Debs McCann, Julianne Elliot, Christopher Wooffindin,~~

~~Christopher Brew and Ben Bavinton for putting up with me and supporting me as friends, partners and housemates through this process.~~

~~v CONTENTS~~

~~ABSTRACT ii~~

~~ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv~~

~~INTRODUCTION 1~~

~~CHAPTER ONE Locating Wong 35~~

~~CHAPTER TWO Film Performance and an Aesthetic of Fragmentation 84~~

~~CHAPTER THREE! The Tactility of Fluctuating Rhythm 144~~

~~CHAPTER FOUR A Study of Performance in Small Spaces 191~~

~~CONCLUSION Film Performance as Affective Intertext 250~~

~~FILMOGRAPHY 269~~

~~BIBLIOGRAPHY 272~~

~~INTRODUCTION~~

1 The stories told in Days of Being Wild have come to an end. We are briefly returned to a location frequented by the characters earlier in the film, now deserted. A public phone rings, remaining unanswered. The film seems to have ended. But then there is another scene, another location and another character. In a static wide shot in the middle ground to the right of the screen this unknown character (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) sits on a bed filing his nails, a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth. A single overhead lamp lights the scene. The room is tiny, so small that it barely fits the bed the character sits on. The ceiling is encroachingly low. A jacket hanging in the foreground to the left of screen takes up nearly a third of the frame. A chair is squeezed between the bed and the jacket. There is a feeling of clutter and tightness. The room’s dimness contributes to this claustrophobic atmosphere. At a measured pace the unknown character continues to file his nails. He stops and inspects each of his hands in turn. He stands, stooping slightly so as to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling, and leaves the frame momentarily as the camera pans slightly to the left. He reaches into frame. As he takes the jacket off the hanger the camera begins panning back to the right. The pan continues and the camera pulls back slightly taking in a dressing table in the right foreground upon which there is another small lamp throwing sparse light on the scene. Still crouching slightly, he pulls on his jacket. Stooping forward, he pulls the cuffs of his shirt out of each jacket sleeve. His face remains affectless throughout, encouraging a focus on the bodily qualities of his performance. Each gesture flows into the next in one continuous motion and each has its own weight as a physical event. He picks up two unopened packs of playing cards from the table putting one in each jacket pocket followed by a lighter placed in the right pocket. With each action we are drawn further into the rhythm of this body in the frame, becoming more and more invested as the scene goes on. He picks up some small change with his left hand and keys with his right, putting them in each of his trouser pockets. All these gestures are habitual, automatic - as if they had been enacted countless times before. The collection of each item seems to be in some sort of order and each object seems to have a place. Picking up a large folded wad of money, he unfolds it, flicks through it, refolds it and puts it in his inside jacket pocket. He picks up another pack from a stack of unopened playing cards, he bends it, looks it over and places it in his vest pocket as the camera adjusts ever so slightly to keep him in the frame. Picking up a white handkerchief, he folds it and looking in the mirror on the dresser, places it carefully in his breast pocket. Again the camera adjusts slightly to capture his movements. He combs his hair, still crouching, still with the same cigarette dangling from his lips. Now the camera begins a subtle diagonal move to the left and forward, pre- empting his movement back toward the bed. He turns out the light, takes a drag of his cigarette and throws it out the open window then turns toward the camera. As the camera glides toward him he walks toward the right of frame and disappears out of shot. The credits roll.

2 Registering the human body in movement has been a primary fascination of photography even before the invention of the moving film camera. Forerunners of cinema, Eadward Muybridge and Etienne Jules Marey worked at capturing movements of the human body by way of a series of sequential photographs.

While mainstream cinema very quickly turned into a medium for telling stories, there remains a fascination with the human body in motion. The ways in which we engage with bodies as visceral, affective and tactile objects is an emerging field of debate in film scholarship, which prefers to focus on the representational value of such film bodies. The ways spectators engage affectively with the cinema have recently received attention but links between these broader discussions and film performance remain largely undeveloped. In recent decades, there has been a movement, small but notable, toward addressing film performance outside a concern with representation.1 It is in this context that this thesis takes place.

~~This thesis offers an understanding of performance in the films of Wong~~

~~Kar-wai and suggests how spectators may engage bodily with these performing~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros (Eds.), Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and Performance (Sydney: Power Publications, 1999), Stern, ‘“Paths That Wind through the Thicket of Things” (Things in the Cinema)’ Critical Inquiry 28:1 (Autumn, 2001) 317-338, ‘Putting on a Show, or The Ghostliness of Gesture’ Senses of Cinema 21 (July-August, 2002), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/21/sd_stern.html [Accessed: March 2007. Web source no longer available], ‘Ghosting: The Performance and Migration of Cinematic Gesture, Focusing on Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Good Men, Good Women’ in Carrie Noland and Sally Anne Ness (Eds.), Migrations of Gesture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) 185 - 215, Nicole Brenez, ‘“Die for Mr. Jensen”: Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence’ [Translated by Fergus Daly and Adrian Martin] Senses of Cinema 16 (September-October, 2001), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/16/cassavetes _jensen.html [Accessed: March 2007. Web source no longer available], ‘The Actor in (the) Place of the Edit’ [Translated by Fergus Daly] Senses of Cinema 21 (July-August, 2002), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/21/sd_actor_edit.html [Accessed: March 2007. Web source no longer available], Jodi Brooks, ‘Rituals of the Filmic Body’ Writings on Dance 17 (1998) 15-20 and ‘Performing Aging/Performing Crisis (for Norma Desmond, Baby Jane, Margo Channing, Sister George, and Myrtle)’ Senses of Cinema 16 (September-October, 2001), http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/16/john-cassavetes/cassavetes_aging/, Kouvaros, Where Does it Happen?: John Cassavetes and Cinema at the Breaking Point (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2004) and Ivone Margulies, ‘Delaying the Cut: The Space of Performance in Lightning Over Water’ Screen 34:1 (Spring, 1993) 54-68.

3 bodies on screen. It investigates how particular combinations of performing body and the cinematic apparatus come together in his work to encourage these kinds of engagements. It argues that performance in Wong’s films is a key element of a film style based on the central aesthetic trait of fragmentation. The thesis contends that by analysing how fragmentation manifests through performing bodies and stylistic elements such as framing, staging, film speed and editing we can begin to understand how Wong’s films create conditions for affective engagement with film performance.

The final scene in Days of Being Wild in many ways epitomises the centrality of performance to Wong’s film style. The scene is a fragment; it exists only in indirect connection to the rest of the film through a slight resemblance between this character and the film’s main protagonist. This scene was shot as part of a sequel that never came to fruition due to the box office failure of Days of Being Wild. The entire scene unfolds in one long take where the camera moves only slightly. This is matched by a bodily performance in which the everyday gestures seem to unfold as one continuous movement. The performer is largely affectless, his blank expression giving little insight into his character’s goals, motivations or connection to the film’s main story. In the scene, as throughout Wong’s oeuvre, the bodily aspects of the performance are further emphasised by the obvious restriction the tiny space puts on the performer’s movement. Discussing the making of this scene, Wong reveals that he ‘reduced the ceiling by half’, which he observes ‘helped’ Leung Chiu-wai ‘create a very unique body movement.’2 The slightly low angled shot emphasises the closeness of the ceiling even more, creating a sense of spatial pressure moving downward

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Wong Kar-wai, ‘Tony Leung’ Interview 35:8 (September, 2005) 198.~~

4 from the top of the screen. The clutter of objects obscures our view of the performer. Though the space looks awkward, Leung Chiu-wai manages to look comfortable and sophisticated while going about his routine before going out for the night, in great part because of the smooth, automatic quality of his actions.

This sense of automatism is created by the precise, efficient nature of his bodily motions. While this is the only instance in which Wong introduces a new character with only one scene at the end of a film, it is in many ways representative of the sense of incompleteness and openness that characterises his unique approach to film performance as a whole.

The effect of this brief scene reverberates throughout this thesis as it exemplifies an important impulse in Wong’s work that this thesis seeks to elucidate. This impulse can be articulated initially as the use of performing bodies and the film medium to invite spectators to experience personal, bodily connections with performance in his films. In watching this scene we are somehow drawn into the unfolding gestures. Its existence as a fragment plays an important part in encouraging the spectator to participate, to invest in its completion. This thesis explores how the fragmentary nature of Wong’s films fosters a relationship of risk and payoff for his spectators. In engaging with the often partial, abstract and ambiguous nature of his work the spectator forgoes the clarity of a more conventional narrative film. However, as this thesis seeks to explain, the potential payoff this offers is a personal, bodily, affective way of experiencing these films and most especially the film performances that take place within them. This investment is stimulated by the fragmentary visual, temporal and spatial configurations of Wong’s filmic bodies throughout his

~~5 oeuvre. This thesis asks how such a relationship between spectating bodies and the performing bodies in his films can occur.~~

According to Grahame F. Thompson, traditional methods of analysing performance on film are based on an exclusive focus upon the ‘text/sign/signification/representation’ relationship.3 That is, a focus on investigating what and how a performance “means” as a set of signs to be read. These signs are understood to create the psychology or personality of a character at the same time as pushing the linear narrative forward by way of knowing a character’s motivations. This line of thought coheres with film studies’ almost exclusive concern with “acting” over broader notions of “performance”. In film studies performance has largely been ignored, often reduced to a more narrow interest in

~~“acting”. Acting in this context refers to ‘the form of performance specifically involved with the construction of dramatic character’. 4~~

~~This dominant approach to film acting is evidenced in the work of leading theorist James Naremore. In his influential study on film acting,~~

~~Naremore argues that ‘the actor hardly exists except as an agent of narrative’.5~~

He states further that ‘[c]learly films depend on a form of communication whereby meanings are acted out’. 6 According to this model, the primary relationship between performer and spectator is based on identification. This approach to analysing film performance understands that the function of the actor is to outwardly project the thoughts and emotions of a character so that the spectator may identify them and identify with them. Within these traditional

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Grahame F. Thompson, ‘Approaches to “Performance”: An Analysis of Terms’ Screen 26:5 (September-October, 1985) 78-90. 4 Paul Macdonald, ‘Film Acting’ in John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (Eds.), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) 30. 5 James Naremore, Acting in the Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 2. 6 Naremore, Acting in the Cinema 2. Emphasis Naremore’s.

6 approaches to performance on film the spectator is understood to engage with the performance on the level of the character’s psychological traits. Acting is judged on the ‘realism’ or believability of the character. It is through an understanding of the character’s traits and motivations as an ‘agent’ of narrative that spectators are understood to engage with performance on screen.7

~~Some of the more recent work on film performance, produced since the late 1990s, has sought to broaden this understanding of performance on screen.8~~

~~In particular, Pamela Robertson Wojcik on the one hand and Cynthia Baron,~~

Diane Carson, and Frank P. Tomasulo on the other, have offered edited books that focus some much needed attention on film performance and allow for a more complex picture of the ways it may operate.9 Most importantly, these contributions offer a greater degree of nuance and a detailed understanding of the range of performance styles that can be found in the cinema beyond the definitions of realistic versus theatrical or the Method versus Brechtian modes of performance. These edited books both provide useful discussion on different approaches to the study of film performance including exploring relationships between actors and directors and the value of researching modes of performance versus analysing the film performance itself.10 Where this new work falls short however is in a continuing emphasis on how such considerations allow deeper understanding of representational meaning (narrative or otherwise) in film.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 Naremore, Acting in the Cinema 2. 8 Alan Lovell and Peter Krämer (Eds.), Screen Acting (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), Pamela Robertson Wojcik (Ed.), Movie Acting: The Film Reader (London: Routledge, 2004) a collection of previously published writings on the topic, and Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Frank P. Tomasulo (Eds.), More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004). Journal of Film and Video 58:1/2 (Summer-Spring, 2006) was also dedicated to new approaches to film performance as well as subsequent articles in the same journal. 9 Wojcik, Movie Acting. Baron, et al., More Than a Method. 10 Wojcik, Movie Acting. Baron, et al., More Than a Method.

7 While the complex ways in which film performances create meaning for spectators are vitally important, approaches that focus attention exclusively on the “meaning-making” aspects of film performance offer an incomplete picture of the ways in which performing bodies on screen might engage spectators affectively. From the very earliest days of cinema, film performance has functioned as much more than just a tool for construction of character and narrative. The performing body has always been a cinematic “thing” as well, and an intensely affective thing at that.11

~~In their introduction to Falling for You, an innovative collection of essays on film and performance, Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros observe that~~

~~‘[n]arrative theory, with its syntagmatic units, for instance, has given us the tools and the language to chart certain filmic articulations of time’ and ask:~~

but where are the models for understanding the ways in which human bodies are moved within the cinematic frame, the ways in which these bodily motions may move viewers? A film is not fixed in space as is a painting, but it is visual and poses similar descriptive challenges to the analyst. How to convey, in language, not merely the “scene” that is being analysed but its affect? 12

Here the editors call attention to the limitations of traditional approaches to film analysis in their inability to take into account the affective potential of film performance. They articulate this limitation as being related to the dominant modes used to describe and analyse film. Stern and Kouvaros go on to outline the connection between a focus on the use of psychoanalytic language in cinema

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 Stern, ‘Paths That Wind’. In which Stern provides an excellent account of the affective potential of things in the cinema, including performers’ gestures. 12 Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 8-9.

8 studies during its entrance into the academy and the standardised approach to cinema, which disallows any discussion of affective experiences in the cinema, that is still dominant. Starting from the methodological problem of ‘how to describe cinematic performance’, Stern and Kouvaros argue that, unlike art history and theatre studies, the discipline of film studies rarely reflects critically on the important relationship between description and analysis.13 The editors contend that descriptions that evoke the scene being analysed for the reader are essential to broadening understandings of film performance to include the ways that bodies on screen can appeal in a tactile, bodily way to spectators.14 They articulate some of the similarities and differences between live performance, painting and the film medium in order to establish the importance of detailed description in conveying the affective force of performance on screen.

Falling for You is a collection of essays that attempts to introduce new ways of discussing film performance. Contrary to traditional approaches, which focus heavily on the semantic aspects of film performance, the writers of these essays seek ‘a notion of filmic engagement where considerations of bodily affect, tactility and memory (configured through a range of sensory responses) play a central role’.15 While traditional approaches focusing on the ways in which spectators engage psychologically see film viewers as largely disembodied, this new approach imagines an embodied spectator engaging psychophysically with cinema. 16 The essays attempt to theorise relations between spectators and film performances outside the projection-identification paradigm. By describing and analysing film performance in Wong’s cinema as !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 13 Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 4. 14 Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 8. 15 Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 20. 16 Linda Williams (Ed.), Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995).

~~9 ‘bodies…within the cinematic frame’, this thesis hopes to add further understanding to the way performance on screen can engage spectators bodily.17~~

~~As the opening description indicates, this means attending in detail to the ways in which bodily performance and the cinematic apparatus work in concert.~~

~~The Filmic Body and Performance as an Element of~~

~~Film Style~~

Discussing the work of John Cassavetes, Kouvaros describes succinctly what this thesis will refer to as “the filmic body” as ‘the energies of bodily performance, of gesture and utterance and movement collid[ing]...with the dynamic, formal, figurative work of shooting, framing, cutting, [and] sound recording’.18 The approach to film performance in this thesis includes all the aspects of what will be referred to as the filmic body.19 This understanding of film performance takes into account both the body of the performer and the film medium. The filmic body is constructed through a process of capturing the performance on film and refiguring it through a range of cinematic choices.

This thesis is concerned with how performance on film operates as an element of film style. It will address how film performance is constructed by, and experienced through, techniques of the filmic medium, that is, how performing bodies operate in combination with a range of cinematic elements.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 9. 18 George Kouvaros interviewed by Needeya Islam, ‘The Cinematic Life of Emotions: John Cassavetes: George Kouvaros Interviewed’ Senses of Cinema 5 (April, 2000), http://sensesofcinema.com/2000/feature-articles/emotions/. In which Kouvaros quotes Adrian Martin’s description of the work of Cassavetes. 19 The term ‘filmic body’ is taken from Brooks’ ‘Rituals of the Filmic Body’. Brooks uses the term film body to refer to film performances that ‘use the filmic apparatus as a way of refiguring the body and its relations to space’ (17). Brooks describes further by saying that it ‘is by no means simply the documentation of a dance or performance piece but is produced, rather through the filmic process of framing, editing and optical printing’ (17).

10 Stylistic analysis attends to the ways in which all the cinematic elements work together. Drawing from the work of David Bordwell, elements of film style are broadly; ‘mise en scene (staging, lighting, performance, and setting); framing, focus, control of color values, and other aspects of cinematography; editing; and sound’.20 Looking at how performance operates as an element of film style is one way to move analysis of film performance beyond the function of a performer as merely acting out a character. Instead we are able to explore the different ways performers’ bodies combine with the cinematic apparatus and at the same time expand our understanding of the various ways in which these filmic bodies might in turn engage embodied spectators.

A stylistic approach to film performance is particularly useful in addressing the ways in which spectators may be affectively engaged by filmic bodies and in developing a history of film performance. It provides a method by which the performing body within the cinematic frame can be described and analysed. Further, this approach enables the analysis of how a particular gesture, framing, camera movement and edit come together and to examine how such combinations might create affects for spectators. Expanding upon this, a stylistic approach to filmic bodies also allows us to view film performances within the broader history of film style, to make fruitful connections and comparisons and to build an aesthetic history of film performance. This thesis contributes to such a history through close analysis of performance in the context of Wong’s overall film style. It also contributes by making stylistic connections between performance in his work and the work of other filmmakers.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20 David Bordwell, On the History of Film Style (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997) 4.~~

~~11 Beyond a Representational Reading~~

There is an endless array of film performances that work affectively to exceed or elide a purely representational reading, including film performance in the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Bresson and John Cassavetes to name a few well-known examples. In Wong’s films the audience is rarely given conventional

“insights” into a character’s psychology. Though they are narrative films, they balance narrative and non-narrative concerns in a very different way to classical narration. The characters in Wong’s films bustle this way and that in stories that not only stop and start, but are also often circular rather than linear. His films are also full of partial, tactile images that shift attention away from narrative towards the materiality of the film medium itself and in particular the material surface of his filmic bodies.

The work of Stern, Kouvaros, Jodi Brooks and Nicole Brenez has opened up considerations of film performance beyond representational readings. While their approaches are diverse, they all share a focus on detailed description of aspects of film performance that fall outside the scope of representational analysis. For example, Brenez investigates Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the

Influence (1974) from the point of view of what she calls ‘the plasticity of creatures’.21 Critiquing traditional approaches to cinema for their ‘absolutely precise categories’, Brenez, like Stern and Kouvaros, argues that the cinema requires its own ‘descriptive procedures’, proposing a ‘return to the reality of seeing and listening, to the sensible and to sensation’.22

~~When addressing the plasticity of creatures in A Woman Under the~~

~~Influence Brenez investigates how the intersections of character and actor are~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Brenez, ‘Die for Mr. Jensen’. 22 Brenez, ‘Die for Mr. Jensen’.~~

12 laid bare.23 In this film, Brenez argues, what is “owned” by the actor and the character is a matter of constant confusion. It is not a matter of giving a real (or realistic) performance but more a matter of really performing. What she means by this is that it is the performance rather than the character that takes precedence. Discussing a moment at the end of the film when, after a long sequence of high drama, chaos and madness which involves Mabel (Gena

~~Rowlands) cutting herself, Mabel says to her husband in an ordinary voice “You know, I’m really nuts”. Analysing this moment Brenez observes:~~

the eruption of the real body, Rowlands’, via the vocal disconnection which serves to definitively banish the referent. The shock provoked by this unexpected emergence of a real body sends the entirety of the fiction back into the register of representation.24

~~Brenez is suggesting that in A Woman Under the Influence the sudden shift from~~

~~Rowlands performing a character to an eruption, through voice, of the “real”~~

Rowlands expressing something that comes from herself allows spectators to witness the fullness of Rowlands’ mastery of the performative register. It is as if by throwing the performance of a character into the realm of ambiguity

~~Rowlands is able, with one comment, to draw attention to her ability to perform.~~

As Brenez argues, this kind of performative shifting also takes place through a kind of duplication of relationships between characters. The relationship between husband and wife Nick (Peter Falk) and Mabel also resembles the relationship between director and actor. As Brenez points out, this emphasis on performance over the presentation of a conventional narrative also

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 23 Brenez, ‘Die for Mr Jensen’. 24 Brenez, ‘Die for Mr Jensen’.~~

~~13 manifests in Cassavetes’ work through the duplication of lines and situations.~~

This repetition highlights the relativity of self as made up of behaviours, of ways of being oneself through certain ways of acting or being. The question of how to behave then becomes prevalent as in Mabel and Nick’s exchange:

~~Mabel: I don’t know what you want. How do you want me to be?~~

~~Nick: Yourself~~

~~Mabel: You mean funny or sad or happy or shy, or what? Which self?~~

Not only is the relationship between actor and director drawn out here, but also the idea of performing one’s self and the relativity of identity as being caught up with notions of performing. In Cassavetes’ work, identity is explicitly caught up with a process of performance, making identity a fluid notion that is formed and reformed through performance. These ideas are also played out through performance in the films of Wong. He uses a similar strategy of repetition or duplication of lines, situations and character traits to highlight the performed nature of character and identity. This is more noticeable across his oeuvre with actors, character names, variations on characters, situations and even re-worked scenes and lines of dialogue appearing from one film to another.

This exchange of roles foregrounds the structure of character as a series of performative choices, thereby bringing performance itself into focus. It is in this stepping outside or going beyond what is practically needed to build the character that the performance becomes the focus of attention. Elsewhere, drawing on Theodor Adorno, Brenez also argues that it is the ‘extra gesture’, which is characterised by Adorno as the ‘two bars too many which are essential to give the opera its full complement’, that takes the performance beyond the

~~14 mere representation of a character.25 Importantly, this extra gesture leads us back to an affective engagement with the film performance. As Brenez states~~

‘the gesture overflows the action on all sides…compulsively accomplishing a non-effective gesture, acknowledging that it’s an affect’.26 In this instance it is in the non-representational aspect of film performance, where performance pushes beyond what is practically needed for representative purposes, that the affective gesture is realised.

In this thesis, one of the core assumptions about performance in Wong’s films is its non-representational drive. His filmic bodies constantly work to escape the economy of narrative and character; they expand through elements such as duplication and repetition as well as different modes of performance, a fractured visual aesthetic and episodic narrative structure. For example, Wong’s use of the same actors over and over again, and, as in the case of Leung Chui- wai’s Chow Mo-wan character, having the same actor play variations on the same character from film to film. Performances in Wong’s films also escape this conventional representational economy through both muted and over the top modes of performance: the pared back performance can work just as affectively as the one that gives in excess. The kind of restraint seen in some of Wong’s films encourages movements and gestures to be experienced in a similar way to the affective “extra” gesture. As will be explored in this thesis, in Wong’s films, it is both restraint and ostentatious performance, and the shifting between these two modes, which contribute to bringing the spectator to an intimate bodily relation to the film performance.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 Brenez, ‘The Actor in (the) Place of the Edit’ in which she quotes Theodor Adorno from Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music [Translated by Rodney Livingstone] (London: Verso, 1992) 30-31. 26 Brenez, ‘The Actor in (the) Place of the Edit’.

~~15 Stern’s theorisation of modes of performance in her work on gesture, like~~

Brenez’, offers invaluable tools for analysis of non-representational aspects of film performance in Wong’s films. Stern’s work proposes a useful method for categorising modes of performance as well as their relationship to cinematic techniques. One of Stern’s articles on gesture in film performance explores performance in several films in which ‘the theatre, or showbiz, or television’ is the subject of the story.27 Stern examines films that foreground the issue of performance in order to discuss the ways in which cinema and performance styles come together to intensify the material aspects of performance. This intensification has to do with making the body of the performer in the process of the film performance an object that is affective for the film spectator particularly through the use of gesture. Stern works from a classification of film performance as ‘an imbrication of acting techniques and cinematic technologies’.28 This recalls Kouvaros’ description of film performance as the collision of bodily performance with several formal elements and this thesis’ definition of the filmic body as combination of the performing body and a range of stylistic techniques.

Like these understandings of film performance, Stern’s definition allows both the performance styles and cinematic choices to be taken into account in investigating how performances are intensely affective events for spectators.

In order to analyse these affectively charged film performances, Stern devises a set of categories: ‘generic tropes, thematic motifs, figurative formations [and] performative modalities’. 29 The last of these categories, performative modalities, is of the most use in the analysis of films other than the films discussed in Stern’s essay that explicitly address notions of performance in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. 28 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. 29 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’.

~~16 some way within the narrative. Stern’s performative modalities are~~

~~‘histrionic/quotidian, inflation/deflation, the daily body/the extra-daily body, on- stage/off-stage, on-screen/off-screen, acting/not acting, actor/role, stage/screen~~

(which maps onto theatre versus film), self/other, performer/audience’.30 Some of these modalities extend not only to the performer but also to the stylistic elements of a film. A film style can be histrionic, for example a Busby Berkley dance sequence, or quotidian as in a static shot of a train arriving at the station.

However, as Stern argues, it is important to recognise that these categories are not mutually exclusive, but rather ‘cinematic propensities’; in the histrionic there is the quotidian and in the quotidian some measure of the histrionic.31 In terms of performance, the histrionic refers to the ways in which performances present themselves as overtly theatrical and the quotidian refers to the ways in which performances attempt to convey the appearance of everyday behaviour.

Similarly, the terms daily and extra-daily body refer to different kinds of performing bodies. While the daily body refers to the body whose techniques are learnt and used unconsciously, the extra-daily body finds its basis in formal, consciously undertaken training. This extra-daily body also takes into account ‘a particular deployment of energy, and includes a context: the presence of an audience and the marking out of performance space.’32 Stern draws these ideas from performance theorist and practitioner, Eugenio Barba, to explain the way certain performers use their bodies in performance.33 In order to take into account the ways in which cinema concerned with the everyday may also work outside a quotidian propensity in its approach, Stern introduces a second set of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 30 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. 31 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. 32 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. 33 Eugenio Barba, Beyond the Floating Islands (New York: PAJ, 1986).

17 terms, ‘inflation and deflation’. 34 Inflation refers to ‘an exaggeration or foregrounding of cinematic codes (colour, editing, camera movement, acting, and so on)’, while deflation refers to the playing down of these codes.35

Stern’s definitions are especially useful for looking at film performance in Wong’s cinema, in that they can be used to identify the diversity of performance modes that operate in his films and the ways in which the performing body may be drawn out by the camera and editing. For instance, in

Wong’s Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1995) an extra-daily body is employed in two similar scenes of cleaning. The performers do not merely enact the everyday gestures of cleaning; they clean with a focus and intensity that denotes the extra daily body. This thesis develops Stern’s understanding of the extra-daily as having been ‘produced through disciplined training’ in its analysis of Wong’s approach to performance.36 It posits the director’s unique process for creating performance as akin to a kind of training for performing bodies. In editing them together one after the other each movement builds upon the other, becoming inflated by its repetition through the editing process. In Wong’s films, the performances range from subdued and restrained to clownish, erratic and nonsensical. This thesis employs Stern’s definitions in its analysis of performance in Wong’s films. Her descriptive categories represent important tools in shifting the focus of examinations of film performance toward the material qualities of both performing bodies and the film medium.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 34 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. The categories of the histrionic and quotidian, inflation and deflation are also discussed in Stern’s ‘Paths That Wind’ 324-326. 35 Stern, ‘Paths That Wind’ 326. 36 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’.

~~18 Repetition and Affective Engagement~~

In formulating an explanation of spectators’ affective relations to film performance, Stern also uses the notion of repetition, specifically the repetition of gestures. Stern is interested in the idea that via repetition gestures resonate within and across films.37 This idea is also central to the analysis of film performance undertaken in this thesis. Stern argues that through repetition and variation gestures can acquire affective power in the cinema. She explores what she calls ‘the after-life of gesture’ or the ‘gift of a gesture that resonates’.38

Stern’s idea of resonance or ghosting points to a way in which gestures impact upon spectators affectively. Gestures, Stern argues, ‘acquire force and significance through repetition and variation’.39 Like Brenez’s understanding of the extra gesture, the repeated gesture registers as a material, affective force.

Stern discusses the way gestures travel from film to film and from films to social contexts and back, focusing on the former. This is why, she suggests, gestures in the cinema cannot be owned by individuals, but instead can be seen to be taken up by different performers at different times and places. Stern explains the effect of gestural repetition saying; ‘it is only when [the] gesture is repeated…that it comes into focus, precisely through the force of repetition, as a gesture.’40 For Stern, the gift of a gesture that resonates is about the power of gestures in the cinema to have a material weight in a particular moment as well as its having an evocative power beyond that moment. Importantly, she posits a sort of affective connection between disparate gestures.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 37 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’ and ‘The Performance and Migration of Cinematic Gesture’. 38 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. 39 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. 40 Stern, ‘The Performance and Migration of Cinematic Gesture’ 203.

~~19 Similarly, Janice Tong briefly addresses the repetition of gestures in~~

Wong’s Chungking Express arguing that they effect a temporal fracturing of the image.41 While the basis of Tong’s ideas in the context of her broader discussion of Wong will be discussed in the next chapter, it is worth noting that this temporal fracturing can be understood as similar to Stern’s idea of ghosting or resonance. All three concepts describe a process by which previous moments come to bear on the gesture at hand. As such this thesis will bring together these complementary ideas for the analysis of this aspect of Wong’s work.

These accounts of the connections between filmic bodies are vital to an understanding of spectators’ bodily connections with film performance. Using these ideas to approach Wong’s filmic bodies, this thesis examines the ways in which moments of performance build upon and resonate with each other both within and across his films. The work of Brenez, Stern and other theorists seeking to understand non-representational aspects of film performance is part of a larger shift in film studies seeking to understand how spectators engage bodily with the film medium. Moving away from film studies’ established representational focus on the ways in which cinema “means” and an understanding of the spectator as largely disembodied, this work attempts to re- insert the body of the spectator into theories of film spectatorship.

~~Cinematic Tactility and Affect~~

Semiotic and psychoanalytic theories of film spectatorship have tended to erase the body of the spectator through a focus on the apparent disembodied meaning one derives from a film. However, there has been a shift in film studies in the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 Janice Tong, ‘Chungking Express: Time and its Displacements’ in Chris Berry (Ed.), Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (London: British Film Institute, 2003) 47-55.

20 last twenty years or so towards understanding how spectators engage with the cinema through their entire body. 42 Conceptions of the sensuous, tactile, material nature of film images mark an important way the body has been “re-inserted” into considerations of how spectators engage with film. For instance, Tom

Gunning’s work on early cinema delineates the way in which cinema moved from a concern with engaging audiences through attraction and sensation to a medium dominated by narrative.43 Gunning’s ‘cinema of attractions’ is placed in the historical context of modernity as an era overflowing with all kinds of other attractions and sensations.44 As Gunning argues, this cinema of attractions was categorised by spectacle as opposed to the construction of clear character psychology. Further, Gunning also contends that this cinema of attractions was not merely snuffed out by narrative cinema’s rise, but can be found ‘in certain avant-garde practices and as a component of narrative films’.45 What is important in Gunning’s work on the cinema is not only his charting of the conversion of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), ‘Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess’ Film Quarterly 44:4 (Summer, 1991) 2-13, and ‘Introduction’ in Linda Williams (Ed.), Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995) 1-20, Tom Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde’ Wide Angle 8:3&4 (Fall, 1986) 63- 70, and ‘An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)credulous Spectator’ Art & Text 34 (Fall, 1989) 31-45, Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York: Routledge, 1993), Miriam Hansen, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: “The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology”’ New German Critique 40 (Winter, 1987) 179-224, ‘Benjamin and Cinema: Not a One-Way Street’ Critical Inquiry 25:2 (Winter, 1999) 306-343, ‘“With Skin and Hair”: Kracauer’s Theory of Film, Marseille 1940’ Critical Inquiry 19:3 (Spring, 1993) 437-469, and ‘Introduction’ in Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) vii- xlv, Anne Rutherford, ‘Cinema and Embodied Affect’ Senses of Cinema 25 (March-April 2003), http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/feature-articles/embodied_affect/ and ‘Precarious Boundaries: Affect, Mise en scene and the Senses in Theodorous Angelopoulos’s Balkins Epic’ in Richard Cándida Smith (Ed.), Art and the Performance of Memory: Sounds and Gestures of Recollection (London and New York: Routledge, 2003) 63-84, and Jennifer Barker, The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). 43 Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attractions’ and ‘An Aesthetic of Astonishment’. 44 Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attractions’. 45 Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attractions’ 64.

21 mainstream cinema from sensation to narrativisation, but also his comments on the academy’s reducing this early cinema to its role as an ascendant to classical narrative cinema. Gunning’s investigation of early narrative cinema offers a re- thinking of cinema outside the strictures of narrative toward a conception of the cinema’s sensational aspects as affective events.

Leading theorist in film spectatorship, Miriam Hansen undertakes a similar project of re-thinking cinema in relation to its affective potential in her invaluable work drawing together the ideas of two very important theorists,

Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer.46 By charting the development of their ideas Hansen extracts the importance of Benjamin and Kracauer’s work for contemporary film theory. In particular, Hansen draws out how these early theorists conceptualised the sensuous properties of the film medium for spectators.

According to Hansen, Benjamin conceives of cinema as appealing to tactile perception, a sensuous and bodily form of perception. Hansen excavates drafts of the Artwork essay, reading them alongside Benjamin’s other work. She argues that in earlier drafts of the Artwork essay the optical unconscious encompassed both ‘inscription’ (the camera) and ‘reception’ (the spectator).47 As

Hansen argues, in the final version of the essay, the ‘sensory-somatic immediacy’ of the cinematic experience that formed an essential part of the concept of the optical unconscious in earlier drafts is left out. Instead there is a focus on inscription, that is, the powers of the camera to ‘register aspects of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 46 Hansen, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience’ in which through her work on Benjamin’s successive, alternative versions of ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ along with his writings on Surrealism, photography, the “mimetic faculty”, Proust, Kafka, Leskov and Baudelaire, the ‘dialectical image’ and his experience of hashish Hansen draws out the relationship between the aura and the optical unconscious. Also, ‘Not a One-Way Street’, ‘With Skin and Hair’ and ‘Introduction’. 47 Hansen, ‘Not a One-Way Street’ 340.

~~22 material reality that are invisible to the unarmed human eye’.48 Following from~~

Hansen, through what Benjamin described as film’s ability to capture facets of the material world that evade human consciousness, cinema is able to get in touch with the optical unconscious.49 The tactility of both the human eye and the film medium are integral to cinema’s potential to open up this optical unconscious. Hence, as Hansen draws out, Benjamin’s earlier conception of the optical unconscious theorises cinema’s peculiar ability to engage viewers on the level of the body.

In her exploration of Kracauer, Hansen charts a similarly important shift in his ideas from the notion of the ‘material dimension’ found in his earlier published and unpublished writings, specifically his notebooks for Theory of

~~Film, to the idea of ‘physical reality’ upon which his published book is based.50~~

~~Hansen argues that unlike his later concept, Kracauer’s earlier idea of the~~

‘material dimension,’ takes into account the potential of film to ‘address its viewer primarily as a corporeal being,’ and engage ‘the viewer on the level of sensory, bodily perception, shattering the boundaries of individual identity’.51

This thesis is grounded in the assumption that spectators can engage with cinema in a bodily, tactile way. It argues that through a range of stylistic choices Wong’s cinema encourages such a tactile mode of engagement, especially with his filmic bodies.

~~As in Hansen’s analysis of ideas of Benjamin and Kracauer, Laura Marks also explores how cinema appeals to spectators’ tactility.52 Marks defines cinema~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 48 Hansen, ‘Not a One-Way Street’ 337. 49 Hansen, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience’!212"! 50 Hansen, ‘With Skin and Hair’ and ‘Introduction’. 51 Hansen, ‘Introduction’ vii-xlv and xvii-xxi. 52 Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).

~~23 that engages our tactile sense of vision as ‘haptic cinema’. 53 Drawing from~~

~~Gilles Deleuze, Marks argues that haptic images are a kind of ‘optical image’ describing them as having a ‘thin’ quality connoting incompleteness. 54 This~~

~~“thinness”, Marks contends, ‘appeal[s] to a haptic, or tactile, visuality’ and~~

~~‘invite[s] the viewer to respond to the image in an intimate, embodied way.’ 55~~

These incomplete images, Marks argues ‘force’ the spectator ‘to bring his or her resources of memory and imagination to complete them.’ 56 The mode of engagement Marks explores is based on a tactile form of looking. According to

Marks, the spectators’ eye brushes over the film’s surface producing an immediate, embodied engagement with the film. Hence, rather than conceiving of watching a film image in order to understand an unfolding narrative, Marks’ proposes a material form of engagement with the image itself.

~~Interestingly, Marks draws from both phenomenological philosophy and~~

Deleuzian notions of affective engagement focusing on what they have in common rather than their differences. Marks takes up the phenomenological idea of the fleshy, embodied eye connected to a complex of nerves. According to this understanding the human eye does not simply “transmit” images to the brain, rather images impact upon the eye and indeed the whole embodied spectator.

~~However, Marks brings this understanding together with a more Deleuzian conception of affect. As Elena del Rio explains, while phenomenological and~~

Deleuzian thought do overlap in their interest in critiquing ‘non-corporeal’ understandings of ‘signification and cognition’ and both see cinema ‘as performing a revelatory function vis-à-vis being’, they also differ significantly in

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 53 Marks, The Skin of the Film 170. 54 Marks, The Skin of the Film 163. 55 Marks, The Skin of the Film 2. 56 Marks, The Skin of the Film 163.~~

24 terms of their understanding of affect.57 Deleuze’s work has also contributed to the shift toward understanding how spectators engage bodily with the cinema, however his theorisation of affect is quite different from traditional phenomenological philosophy.58 While phenomenological thought sees affect and sensation as deriving from a subjective and corporeal relation to the world,

Deleuzian thought sees affect as pre-personal, even non-human flows ‘not ownable, by an individuated agent’.59 In other words, affect is not contained within people and things but it is rather endlessly transmutable flows. Hence while Marks understands affect as a force that can arise from non-corporeal sites she also conceives of its bodily impact on the fleshy, tactile spectator.

Though Marks focuses nearly exclusively on cross-cultural film and video works that circulate outside commercial cinema, her ideas can be applied to aspects of cinema as a whole. Marks’ ideas are particularly useful for looking at performance in Wong’s films because of her concern with the affective nature of the partial image. Marks’ idea of the ‘thin’ image that characterises haptic cinema is vital to this thesis in that it allows analysis of the way the fragmented nature of Wong’s films encourages immediate bodily engagements with film performance. This thesis draws together Marks’ understanding of haptic images with Benjamin and Kracauer’s conception of filmic materiality. In this thesis the spectator is understood to engage affectively with filmic bodies via the shared materiality of both image and spectator. It reads Wong’s, partial, tactile images as examples of Marks’ haptic cinema and also employs Benjamin and Kracauer’s

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 57 Elena del Rio, ‘Film’ in Hans Rainer Sepp and Lester Embree (Eds.), Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics (Dordrecht; London: Springer, 2010) 111-117. 58 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image [Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam] (London: The Athlone Press, 1986) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image [Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta] (London: The Athlone Press, 1989). 59 Barbara M. Kennedy, Deleuze and Cinema: The Aesthetics of Sensation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000) 101.

~~25 theorisation of the ability of film images to connect bodily with spectators in its analysis of these images.~~

~~Performance and Fragmentation~~

In order to delve into the ways in which performance on screen can draw the viewer into powerfully visceral and sensuous encounters with filmic bodies one must understand the affective potential of performance as well as cinema. In the introduction to a collection of articles on performance Acting (Re)considered: a theoretical and practical guide, Phillip Zarrilli notes the importance of performance theory when addressing how we engage with performance, stating that:

Every time an actor performs, he or she implicitly enacts a “theory” of acting - a set of assumptions about the conventions and style which guide his or her performance, the structure of actions which he or she performs, the shape that those actions take (as a character, role, or sequence of actions as in some performance art), and the relationship to the audience. Informing these assumptions are culture-specific assumptions about the body-mind relationship, the nature of “self,” the emotions/feelings, and performance context.60

What is interesting here is the way theories of acting delimit performance in practice. In an introduction to a section in Acting (Re)considered Zarrilli remarks that in the article that follows Richard Hornby ‘calls for the overthrow of a

~~Strasbergian-based self-absorbed, class-room-based method of training and~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 60 Phillip B. Zarrilli, Acting (Re)Considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide (New York: Routledge, 2002) 3.~~

~~26 concludes that it should be used only as a special technique for film acting.’61~~

The same preconception that realism is suited to the cinema dominates film studies. The Strasbergian method that Hornby refers to is one that enjoyed short- lived popularity in Hollywood embodied by the stardom of such actors as

Marlon Brando and James Dean. The Method itself was considered lazy and undisciplined by many, with most actors preferring a more disciplined approach to character and performance. In the form that took hold in the cinema, it is a mode that has psychological realism and the engagement of spectators with the inner turmoil of the character as its goal. The Method is in fact a melding of actor and role while there are other realistic modes that clearly demarcate the actor as “in control” of the role rather letting the role take over. While aspects of the Method still remain in contemporary film acting, it is curious indeed that in its original form this mode of performance that so prided itself on realistically portraying a character now appears to many to be strangely stylised or theatrical.

This is a good reminder that what is considered “realistic” shifts over time. What is needed then is an opening out of the ways in which we approach performance in the cinema in terms of performance modes. This requires that we attend to other aspects of film performance other than the “realistic” acting out of a character.

Performance theory is as diverse as performance practice itself and offers many ideas that can expand the ways in which we understand performing bodies on screen. Though these theories undoubtedly are about live performance, they contain ideas that, when adapted to studies of film performances, allow attention to be given to aspects unable to be addressed within the strictures of traditional

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 61 Zarrilli, Acting (Re)Considered 242-243. Emphasis mine.~~

~~27 approaches. This thesis contends that the theories discussed here are in some way~~

“cinematic” to begin with. This cinematic attribute is based on the idea that cinema’s particular quality lies in its ability to draw out previously unperceived aspects of the material world, as in Benjamin and Kracauer’s understanding of the power of the film medium. This cinematic element then, springs from a focus on the “bodiliness” of performance as a material thing – on the capabilities and attributes of the body in performance – as well as the bodily engagement of the spectator.

Transposing performance theories to the study of film requires an important shift in the way these theories are used. This means a shift from a focus on the performer’s intention to an exploration of the end result of the imbrication or collision of the film medium and performance. It is a question of investigating the affective characteristics of the body on screen for the spectator in the moment of its unfolding on screen. What this means in terms of methodology is that rather than investigating any particular actor’s training or performative intent one focuses more on the film performance itself, or more specifically the combination of the performing body and the cinematic apparatus as it unfolds on screen.

Josette Feral’s conception of performance as ‘the experience of a body wounded, dismembered, mutilated, and cut up (if only by a movie camera…), a body belonging to a fully accepted lesionism’ is central to this thesis. 62 Though

~~Feral argues that she is discussing ‘the essential foundations of all performance’, she is in fact drawing from ‘non-narrative’ and ‘non-representational’ forms of~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 62 Josette Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality: The Subject Demystified’ [Translated by Terese Lyons] Modern Drama 25:1 (Spring, 1982) 172.

28 theatre to formulate her theory.63 Lesionism is defined by Feral as ‘a practice whereby the body is represented not as an entity or a united whole, but as divided into parts or fragments’.64 However, as Feral argues, ‘[t]he body is not cut up in order to negate it, but in order to bring it back to life in each of its parts which have, each one, become an independent whole’.65

Sophie Wise takes up Feral’s idea of lesionism to explain the fragmented filmic bodies in Hal Hartley’s films. 66 Indeed, Wise argues that ‘[a] filmic body could be said to be “belonging to a fully accepted lesionism”’.67 According to

Wise then, all film performances could be understood in this way as ‘belonging to a fully accepted lesionism’. However, as Wise explains, in the cinema there is significant variety in the extent to which this lesionism is accepted. Classical narrative style for instance, combats this lesionism through all manner of strategies including the continuity system and the construction of coherent characters and narratives.

Wise argues that Hartley’s style embraces cinematic partiality rather than attempting to cover it up in the way that continuity style does.68 For Wise, an emotionally blank performance style, the recycling of the same performers from film to film, consistent use of close-ups of parts of the body and avoidance of establishing shots, are all markers of Hartley working with, rather than against, cinematic fragmentation.69 Wise employs the ideas of Augusto Boal, Bertolt

~~Brecht and the Jena Romantics to posit an active spectator of Hartley’s films.~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 63 Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 171. 64 Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 180. 65 Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 172. 66 Sophie Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley, Or Rather, What Hal Hartley Likes About Me: The Performance of the (Spect)actor’ in Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 245-275. 67 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’ 249. 68 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’ 246. 69 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’ 248.

29 Many of the elements Wise identifies as fragmentary in Hartley’s films can also be found in Wong’s films. However, there are also significant differences in the nature and use of these elements. Whereas in Hartley the “blank” performance mode is largely consistent across the performances, in Wong there are often shifts in mode from one performer to another, and even the same performer from scene to scene and film to film. Wise understands Hartley’s recycling of performers as contributing to fragmentation in terms of spectators remembering the performer’s idiolect from film to film so that spectators connect characters from past films. Wong’s use of the same performers again and again also works in this way but is further complicated by performers repeating themselves and also by repeating and varying the same stories, scenes and actions of other performers both within and between his films. In Hartley, a lack of establishing shots serves to, as Wise argues, ‘thrust [us] straight into the action’.70 In Wong’s films it does this but is also part of a broader style of cinematic spatial disorientation that involves special effects, camera movement and editing. Wise explains Hartley’s use of close shots of performing bodies as creating a powerful performative presence that she links to identification with both the character and the performer. Conversely, Wong’s preference for close shots of performing bodies is often not for the purpose of allowing identification but instead is more about the tactility or materiality of the part-object of the body. Wong’s concern with tactility is also evidenced in many other stylistic choices such as blurry, distorted images and his use of special effects like slow motion and step-printing.

~~Applying Feral’s ideas to Hartley’s films, Wise states that:~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 70 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’ 246.~~

30 By investing “part-objects” with emotion through these tight close- ups, by confronting, accepting and working with, not against fragmentation, Hartley demonstrates that bodies do not fade as a result of their filmic partiality, but conversely become aggrandised and suggest their own limitlessness.71

~~Wise’s understanding of the way cinematic fragmentation can ‘aggrandise’ and~~

‘suggest [the] limitlessness’ of the performing body is key to how fragmentation in Wong’s films is understood in this thesis. This process occurs through both performative and cinematic elements working in concert to encourage spectators to engage with them as material, affective filmic bodies. Wise’s conception of

‘limitlessness’ is also very close to what this thesis sees as a quality of openness in Wong’s filmic bodies. Wise’s limitlessness can be reconceived as the openness of fragments being reconfigured by an endless array of connections with one another, whereby filmic bodies are transformed and reconfigured by the spectator through these connections.

As Feral contends: ‘Instead of atrophying, the body is therefore enriched by all the part-objects that make it up and whose richness the subject learns to discover in the course of the performance. These part-objects are privileged, isolated, and magnified by the performer.’72 The emphasis on the “course of the performance” could easily be shifted to an emphasis on the experience of the unfolding film for the study of film performance and a consideration of how it is

“privileged, isolated, and manifested” by both the performer and the film medium. In Wong’s films one can see how, through an aesthetic of fragmentation, moments of performance are invested with intensity. Its partial quality or character as a ‘part-object’ lends it an affective, inviting quality for the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’ 249-250. 72 Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 172.

~~31 embodied spectator. A good example of this can be found in a “sex scene” from~~

Wong’s Ashes of Time. In this scene, Wong cuts together numerous close-ups of bodies caressing and reacting to each other. Bodies dissolve into one another making it difficult to decipher which body parts belong to each character/performer. The result is that the filmic gestures are imbued with a material weight in and of themselves regardless of whom they belong to.

Feral’s comments are developed in this thesis through a focus on Wong’s filmic bodies. Violent lesionism appropriately describes Wong’s approach to film performance because of his penchant for shifting modes of performance, tight close-ups, framings that obscure the performer, distorted, abstract, blurry and out of focus images, slow motion and step-printing, focusing or camera movement, rapid, at times non-linear editing and a less than strictly linear approach to both narrative and character. Bringing Feral’s notion of lesionism in performance together with Marks’ understanding of the tactility of partial film images this thesis posits Wong’s filmic bodies as lesionistic and haptic. Like the kind of fragmentation being described here by Feral and Wise, in Wong’s work multiple kinds of fragmentation function in such a way as to imbue the assembled “part-objects” of performance, (shots, scenes, sequences, etc.) with a powerful affective charge. Indeed, this thesis proposes that spectators may experience a cumulative affective charge, through a process of moments of performance building upon and combining with each other in different ways in

Wong’s work. It examines how these stylistic choices create filmic bodies that are “dismembered”, that is, cut into pieces and reconstituted in a way that is incomplete; a set of part-objects or haptic, resonant film images.

~~32 Structure of Thesis~~

The central concern of this thesis is to determine the nature of Wong’s filmic bodies. It analyses how Wong’s film style is based on fragmentation and how this is essential to the uniqueness of these filmic bodies. Further, this thesis seeks to understand the way these recurring part-objects of performing bodies accumulate in terms of the affective engagement of spectators. It posits a taxonomy of Wong’s filmic bodies as 1) partial and tactile, 2) temporally fractured and 3) spatially fractured.

~~The exploration of performance in Wong’s cinema begins, in Chapter~~

One, by locating Wong’s films critically as well as in the broader history of film style, drawing attention to the lack of consideration of film performance as a key aspect of his unique approach to filmmaking. Chapter Two begins the thesis proper by establishing fragmentation as the main characteristic of Wong’s film style and the central concept of this thesis. It investigates how fragmentation manifests in terms of his filmic bodies, highlighting repetition as a key facet of this. This is undertaken through a close analysis and comparative study of

Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, two Wong films widely considered companion pieces. Marks’ notion of the affective potential of part-objects in the cinema and Feral’s description of lesionism are employed to theorise how this fragmentary film style might encourage affective, bodily engagements with film performance.

Chapter Three focuses on the radical shifts in the rhythm of the filmic bodies in Wong’s films as part of his over-arching aesthetic of fragmentation. It argues that this fracture of tempo is vital to the tactility of his filmic bodies. It contends that this kind of juxtaposition of different tempos contributes to a

~~33 fractured temporality and produces jarring shifts in rhythm, which makes up an important part of the affective potential of his filmic bodies for spectators.~~

Chapter Four investigates the way Wong’s approach to cinematic space contributes to the tactility of his filmic bodies. It argues that by attending to the particular combinations of setting, performing bodies and the cinematic apparatus Wong’s filmic bodies can be understood as inextricably and tangibly enmeshed in their material surrounds. It investigates the ways in which the fragmentation and repetition of space (setting and cinematic construction) and the movements that take place, both within and between his films, contribute to the affective potential of these filmic bodies.

Through close analysis of performance as a key element of Wong’s film style this thesis contributes to an understanding of the affective potential of film performance in his work and the affective potential of film performance more broadly. The thesis offers a model for analysing Wong’s filmic bodies that may be adapted in analysing non-representational aspects of performance more broadly. The analysis of this director’s filmic bodies builds upon an already established discourse on his film style. The next chapter will discuss the enduring characteristics of Wong’s film style as consistently identified by critics and indicate how their ideas will be developed through this thesis. The chapter will also suggest how his film style can be placed at the intersection of stylistic traditions, namely, Hong Kong film style and art-cinema.

~~CHAPTER ONE Locating Wong !~~

35 We are watching Wong Kar-wai’s 2046, and for the second time we are watching Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) ready himself for a night out on Christmas Eve. The song playing softly on the radio, ‘The Christmas Song’, is the same as in the earlier, shorter scene, which this scene closely resembles. The camera pans slowly from right to left as it did before, but this time it pans across a calendar and the radio from which the song comes. Again it pans across a desk where we see a wisp of smoke rising from a lit cigarette resting in the same ashtray as in the earlier version of the scene. As the pan continues, Tony comes into view in the background with his back to us at the mirror combing his hair into place. The scene is softly lit by a small light above the mirror casting much of the foreground into darkness and focusing our attention on the body in the adjoining room. His actions play out in slight slow motion. He turns to the right, picks up a hand towel and moves toward us wiping the hair gel off his hands as the camera glides back, downward and pans slightly to the left to follow his movements and bring the desk back into view. The camera sits low, allowing his upper body to fall out of the frame, focusing our attention on his arms and hands and the objects on the desk. He folds the towel and places it on the desk. In the same continuous motion, he picks up his jacket, which hangs over the chair, with his left hand, throwing it over his right arm. He picks up the resting cigarette, takes a drag and butts it out. As before, the whole scene seems to unfold in one continuous movement with each gesture flowing into the next. There is an affective weight or density to this body in the frame. These filmic gestures have a quality of echo about them, they are both happening and have already happened. They recall the scene earlier in the film, as well as other scenes from other films by Wong, some involving Tony, some not.

~~Poet Paul Valery once said, ‘A poem is never finished, only abandoned.’1 Nathan~~

Lee argues that this comment rings true for Wong’s approach to 2046 (2004), but in fact it could be said of all his films to date. Wong never seems to be able to completely “abandon” his films and often returns to similar concerns, stories, characters, performers, and even scenes, framings, edits and bodily actions in different variations across his body of work. Roger Ebert describes 2046 as ‘not a self-contained film’, saying ‘[w]atching 2046, I wonder what it could possibly mean to anyone not familiar with Wong’s work and style’.2

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Nathan Lee uses this quote to describe 2046 in ‘Elusive Objects of Desire’ Film Comment 41:4 (July-August, 2005) 31. 2 Roger Ebert, ‘2046’ Chicago Sun-Times (September 2, 2005), http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050901/REVIEWS/50822004/1023 !

36 As this opening description indicates, Wong’s films prompt a mode of analysis that is able to take into account the way in which his film performances are connected to, and build upon one another, from film to film. 2046 overflows with evocations from Wong’s other films, with more and more seeming to surface upon repeat viewings. In its consideration of performance, this thesis wrestles directly with the problem of how to speak of the simultaneity of many disparate moments at once – how to evoke the intensity of the affective fracturing and layering that occurs in the experience of watching one of his films. It seeks to articulate the presentness of actions, scenes and moments that have occurred in other films coming to bear on the moment at hand. It is by considering performance as an important element of his film style that this thesis aims to examine how such connections may occur. As Ebert’s comments imply, an understanding of the director’s style is integral to an understanding of these connections.

Wong is one of the most well-known directors of Hong Kong’s second wave. In his cinema the surface of the film image is paramount and he constructs distinctly tactile filmic images. His work is characterised by a highly fragmentary use of, among other things, framing, film speed, editing and performance that creates a unique visual and narrative style. Performance forms a central element of Wong’s unique cinematic style but has yet to be explored in any detail in critical literature on his work. This thesis will bring considerations of performance to the forefront of an analysis of his style and further connect this aspect of his work to other stylistic traditions and the work of particular directors. Wong is widely considered an innovative film stylist. However, locating the director’s film style within or between specific film traditions is a

~~37 complex undertaking. Working within and against the conventions of several established film traditions, his style has been classified in many different ways.~~

~~Locating performance as an important element of his film style is an even more intricate task, and one central to this thesis.~~

This chapter provides a review of critical literature on Wong’s cinema as it relates to the central themes and terms at work in this thesis. It establishes the main tenets of Wong’s film style as an essential foundation for analysing his filmic bodies. Suggesting how his training in television and early career may have shaped his approach to film style, the chapter provides a brief overview of the development of the director’s style over his oeuvre and reviews the critical literature on Wong. His films have elicited an expansive field of critical literature and this thesis aims to build upon this work. Before moving on to a detailed analysis of performance in Wong’s films, it will therefore be necessary to engage with the work of the key critics in the field including Adrian Martin, Janice

~~Tong, Nicole Brenez, Ackbar Abbas, Tony Rayns, Rey Chow, David Bordwell,~~

~~Peter Brunette, Stephen Teo, Jean-Marc Lalanne, Larry Gross and Frank P.~~

~~Tomasulo. The work of all these critics will be considered primarily for the ways in which it collectively establishes a discourse on the major characteristics of the director’s style.~~

Fragmentation is the most important characteristic of Wong’s style as evidenced by this literature. Following from this, a series of related stylistic traits can be identified. These include: repetition, the double, the emphasis on everyday spaces, gestures and situations, fluctuating temporality, rhythmic alternation and spatial discontinuities and disorientation. The frequent discussion of these traits in the critical literature will provide evidence and justification for

38 them as central to Wong’s approach to film performance in this thesis. The literature provides support for the argument that performance is an important but relatively neglected aspect of Wong’s style that is integral to the more general elements of his unique directorial style.

After establishing the general stylistic parameters of Wong’s style as discussed in the critical literature, this chapter moves on to look more specifically at how these critics have addressed film performance. It will be shown that while performance has often been mentioned, it has rarely been discussed or analysed in detail. Nonetheless, these observations on performance do contain thought-provoking stimuli for this thesis. Importantly, several critics including Martin, Gross and Tomasulo draw comparisons between the gestural codes and modes of performance employed in Wong’s cinema and that of important post-war modernist filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard,

~~Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Bresson.~~

Rather than defining Wong’s approach to film performance as directly influenced by any one director or several directors at once, this thesis suggests similarities could be understood through a shared cinematic mode that connects them. The chapter considers how Bordwell’s conception of art-cinema, as a mode that departs from the linear, cause-and-effect narrative conventions that may be found in mainstream narrative cinema, can be productively used to locate

Wong’s style within a broader film tradition.3 In particular, this section gives an account of art-cinema’s departure from mainstream narrative cinema in its approach to characterisation, as it can be related directly to film performance.

Next the chapter provides some points of contact between Wong’s style and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 David Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ in Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985) 205-233 and ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice’ in Poetics of Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2007) 151-169.

39 mainstream Hong Kong film style, indicating how they can be used in an examination of performance. It is shown that while the director works with many of the conventions of Hong Kong film style, he also departs from this style. This chapter therefore locates Wong’s style as sitting at the intersection of several stylistic traditions.

Lastly, building on established understandings of stylistic traits, performance and the positioning of the director’s style, this chapter returns to the concept of the filmic body as a way to understand performance in Wong’s films.

The concept of the filmic body operates in this thesis as a point of connection that takes into account performing bodies, stylistic choices and conventions, and the engagement of the spectator. Wong’s distinctive approach to film style and performance within this can in part be understood by outlining his training and early career.

~~Born in 1958 in Shanghai, Wong immigrated to Hong Kong with his family when he was five years old. After graduating from graphic design at~~

Hong Kong Polytechnic in 1980, he specialised in film and television production at the school attached to TVB, one of the biggest TV stations in Hong Kong. At the time, the Hong Kong television industry was flourishing and fresh, young talent was in demand. At large television stations like TVB writers and directors were given much freedom, fostering experimentation and innovation in terms of both style and content. At TVB Wong was trained in writing and directing and worked on several drama series as a writer and production assistant. Becoming a scriptwriter, he contributed to the writing of films of many different popular genres, often crossing one popular genre with another. This early training can be

~~40 seen as a formative influence on his innovative and experimental approach to film style and genre as a director.~~

~~Wong is considered to be part of the “second wave” of the Hong Kong~~

~~New Wave, which according to Stephen Teo began in 1984 with Eddie Fong’s~~

Amorous Woman of the Tang Dynasty/Tang Chao Haofang Nu.4 The second wave also includes Stanley Kwan and Clara Law. Teo argues that the first wave began in 1979 with several innovative films including Ann Hui’s The Secret, though he notes there were many films that came beforehand that anticipated its arrival.5 This first wave consisted of Hui, Tsui Hark, Allen Fong and Patrick

Tam, among others. The films of the first wave are difficult to group together in terms of common stylistic traits. Broadly speaking these films were more interested in depicting the reality of the contemporary context of Hong Kong picking up on many of the prevalent concerns and issues of the time. According to Teo these films tended towards a new, “realistic” aesthetic ‘based on free-style editing, realistic location photography and faster than usual pace’, breaking with the escapism and fantasy of the martial arts films that dominated Hong Kong cinema in the 70s.6 Second wave films are characterised by their concern with the 1997 handover as well as their continued interested in aesthetic innovation.

The second wave comes directly out of the first partly because the second wave trained with and assisted first wave directors. Early in his career Wong worked with Tam as a writer, initially writing the script for one of Tam’s feature films,

~~Final Victory (1987). Their working partnership continued into Wong’s career as~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 Stephen Teo, ‘Chapter Twelve: The Second Wave’ in Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: British Film Institute, 1997) 184. 5 Teo, ‘Chapter Ten: The New Wave’ 137-161 and Law Kar, ‘An Overview of Hong Kong’s New Wave Cinema’ in Esther Ching-Mei Yau (Ed.), At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) 31-52. 6 Teo, ‘Chapter Ten: The New Wave’ 145.

41 a director with Tam bringing his editing expertise to Days of Being Wild (1990) and Ashes of Time (1994). One can see a similar drive toward visual experimentation and stylistic eclecticism in the work of both directors.

~~Wong has made ten features to date, As Tears Go By (1988), Days of~~

~~Being Wild, Chungking Express (1994), Ashes of Time, Fallen Angels (1995),~~

~~Happy Together (1997), In the Mood for Love (2000), 2046, his first Hollywood effort My Blueberry Nights (2007) and his return to Hong Kong with The~~

~~Grandmaster (2013). He has also directed a few television commercials, a music video, one short film called In the Mood for Love 2001 (2001) and another called~~

~~The Hand in a collection entitled Eros (2004).7~~

Though Wong’s oeuvre is marked by a tendency for stylistic shifting, two competing tendencies can be identified. The first is a free wheeling style, characterised by jittery handheld, out of focus camerawork, jarring step-printing and jump cut editing. The second is a smoother, slower style characterised by steadicam, tracking or dollying camerawork, static long takes and fewer edits.

Over time Wong’s film style has moved gradually from off the cuff edginess to a kind of sublime stylistic elegance. Chungking Express is indicative of the former, while In the Mood for Love is representative of the later. However, a closer analysis of his films disrupts a neat chronological development of his style. For instance, his second feature Days of Being Wild already contained many languorous moments and camera movements. Also, though most of the camerawork and editing in 2046 is smooth and slow, it does contain scenes that use step-printing and jump cut editing. Though the director’s work is

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 Wong has directed television commercials for Motorola, BMW and Lacoste and a music video for DJ Shadow’s ‘Six Days’. Wong’s short In the Mood for Love 2001 played once at the Cannes Film Festival and has proved impossible to track down.

~~42 characterised by shifts between these two tendencies there are strong stylistic and aesthetic connections between his films.~~

Across Wong’s oeuvre there are several enduring traits that manifest in different ways and to different degrees from film to film. Elements that can be found in all his films include: repetition of similar scenes, distant or opaque characters, scenes constructed around sets of habitual gestures, use of dead time, doubles and substitutes, a visual style that obscures performing bodies, spatial and temporal fragmentation, narrative ellipsis, and several forms of repetition that create ruptures in the linear flow.

Wong’s approach to film performance has developed along with his style, as he refines and reworks elements over time. Modes of performance range from emotionally blank to expressive and ostentatious but tend to be characterised by a lack of psychological interiority. As the director’s style has evolved, the subtle, blank mode has become more prevalent. Performances throughout his oeuvre are often constructed around the repetition of sets of everyday gestures, which he frequently edits together to emphasise their habitual, repetitious quality. Wong also consistently uses the film medium in various ways to distort, abstract and otherwise fragment performing bodies. Focus, film speed, framing, camera movement, mise-en-scene and editing are continually employed to obscure these bodies. All these elements direct attention toward the body of the performer, their movements, their physicality on screen. This focus on the body is characteristic of a cinematic approach that foregrounds the role of performing bodies as textured, material objects. By attending to the way in which performing bodies operate within Wong’s broader film style, this thesis aims to

~~43 elucidate the function and importance of performance in his cinema. The dynamic and static nature of this broader style is reflected in writing on his work.~~

This thesis uses critical writing on Wong’s cinema as a firm foundation to determine the role of performance in his overall style. What follows is an examination of the various critical perspectives on the director’s distinctive film style. This survey will show that while questions of style have been addressed to his work the question of performance as a key element of his style has not yet received close attention.

~~Critical Literature~~

Curtis K. Tsui remarks that Wong has been ‘[l]auded by many as one of the most exciting, visionary film artists to emerge in recent cinema’.8 The director has long been considered an innovative film stylist and as such his work has prompted much critical debate.9 Wong himself says ‘I want to change…I’m not sure if I will make 50 films in my life. I want to make films in different genres, and I want to try different things. It means a lot to me…[s]tyle is something that has to be changed’.10 This indicates his commitment to stylistic diversity and transformation. Despite his dedication to stylistic innovation, there are certain stylistic traits that return and develop throughout his oeuvre. Many of these have also been widely discussed in the critical literature. These include: blurry, out of focus, distorted, grainy images, frequent use of step-printed and regular slow motion, hand-held camera work, jump cuts and other kinds of non-linear editing, voice-over narration, a pace that shifts violently between furious motion and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 Curtis K. Tsui, ‘Subjective Culture and History: The Ethnographic Cinema of Wong Kar-wai’ Asian Cinema 7:2 (December, 1995) 93. 9 Tony Rayns, ‘Ahfei Zhenjuang (Days of Being Wild)’ Sight and Sound 4:12 (December, 1994) 41-42 on Wong’s second feature represents the first piece of critical writing in English to do this. 10 Peter Henne, ‘Creating a Mood’ The Film Journal 104 (February, 2001) 14.

~~44 inaction, ellipsis, recurring musical motifs and bold use of colour and texture.~~

~~These traits are repeatedly identified as central to Wong’s stylistic uniqueness.~~

~~The vast and diverse body of critical literature that has been generated by~~

Wong’s cinema has sought to explain the motivations and effects of this stylistic richness and innovation. Scholars have applied a wide range of critical approaches and theoretical and interpretative frameworks to his work covering everything from its philosophical undercurrents to genre and the stylistic analysis of its surface textures. Discussion of the stylistic features of his work forms a common thread across this critical literature. However, discussions of style are also often subsumed into analysis of his films in terms of how they represent the context of pre and post handover Hong Kong.

The bulk of the critical literature on Wong’s work, including analysis of stylistic elements, focuses on the analysis of his films as allegories for the socio- political context of Hong Kong. It has in fact become almost obligatory to make such allegorical connections in any analysis of his work.11 Ackbar Abbas for instance, makes direct links between the historical, cultural and political context

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 The following represents a selection of critical work that puts an allegorical reading at the centre of analysis of Wong’s cinema: Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997), ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ in Jean-Marc Lalanne, David Martinez, Ackbar Abbas and Jimmy Ngai (Eds.), Wong Kar-wai (Paris: Dis Voir, 1997) 39-81 and ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’ in Linda Krause and Patrice Petro (Eds.), Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003) 142-156, Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover, City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema (London: Verso, 1999), David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), Gina Marchetti, ‘Buying American, Consuming Hong Kong: Cultural Commerce, Fantasies of Identity, and the Cinema’ in David Desser and Poshek Fu (Eds.), The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity (Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 289-313, Jo Law, ‘Wong Kar-wai’s Cinema: Analogues of Experience’ Metro Magazine 126 (2001) 92-97, Nancy Blake, ‘”We Won’t Be Like Them”: Repetition Compulsion in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love’ The Communication Review 6:4 (2003) 341-356, Wimal Dissanayake, Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), Jeremy Tambling, Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), and Gary Bettinson, ‘Reflections on a Screen Narcissist: Leslie Cheung's Star Persona in the Films of Wong Kar-wai’ Asian Cinema 16:1 (April, 2005) 220-238.

~~45 of Hong Kong and certain visual qualities of Wong’s films.12 He describes Hong~~

Kong as in a state of disappearance in the period between the 1984 declaration and the 1997 handover to China.13 Abbas argues that the declaration as well as the Tiananman Square Massacre in 1989 caused a shift in Hong Kong toward considerations of Hong Kong culture and identity both of which were seemingly on the verge of disappearance.14 As Abbas explains, previous to this crisis of disappearance Hong Kong culture was largely considered to be non-existent, or more specifically, something imported from elsewhere whether from China or the West.15 He identifies several cultural responses to this state of disappearance, including ‘using disappearance to deal with disappearance’ under which he classifies many of the visual qualities of Wong’s films.16 Abbas reads aspects of the director’s film style such as his fragmented, obscured, disappearing, abstract and hard to grasp images as demonstrative of this response.17 His allegorical readings are representative of the mainstay of criticism on Wong’s films.

~~While allegorical meaning is certainly integral to an understanding of~~

~~Wong’s films, this focus often sidelines in-depth analysis of his film style in terms of its connection to broader film history as well as its affective potential.~~

This thesis is not concerned with reading Wong’s films in terms of how they operate as allegories of Hong Kong. Instead, it is interested in investigating performance as a particularly important and largely ignored element of the director’s film style. This thesis does however develop several of Abbas’ ideas, namely the quality of visual ambiguity, spatial discontinuity, the use of repetition

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ and ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’.! 13 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 3. 14 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 4. 15 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 6. 16 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 8. 17 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance.

46 or seriality, and shifts between blind action and waiting or dead time.18 Instead of proposing a socio-political reading of Wong’s work, this thesis reads all these elements broadly as fragmentation and applies them to an analysis of his filmic bodies. These elements are examined in terms of how they shape his filmic bodies and in turn encourage affective engagement in spectators.

Considerations of Wong’s film style identify several consistent traits in the director’s work that are invaluable for an analysis of his filmic bodies. What follows examines how these traits have been discussed and how they stimulate and shape this thesis’ examination of his filmic bodies. As such it gives an account of the critical discourse on Wong’s film style in terms of; fragmentation, repetition, temporality and rhythm, space and performance. However, as an overview of the critical discussion on the topic indicates, his films require special attention be paid to the surface textures of his film style.

~~Film Style~~

Though Wong’s film style has developed and changed from film to film, the literature suggests some key stylistic traits that can be traced across his body of work. The difficulty in reducing a director’s film style to a discrete set of stylistic elements lies in the inability of such an approach to take into account what may be considerable stylistic differences from one film to the next. At times Wong’s stylistic signature is reduced to a set of often-repeated stylistic elements that do not actually reflect every film in his oeuvre. Several critics identify Wong’s films as having an ‘MTV’ style or aesthetic, however this classification would hardly

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ and ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’.~~

~~47 be suited to such films as Days of Being Wild or In the Mood for Love. 19~~

Laurence Remilla for instance, critiques Wong’s Fallen Angels saying ‘[t]he images ape MTV’s disjointed aesthetic’ describing it as ‘a feature-length MTV promo’.20 Remilla then extends his critique saying ‘Wong Kar-Wai work offers a pointless flipside’ to Leos Carax, another filmmaker who, like Wong, focuses on the “[s]urface”/”[l]ook” of the film image.21 Such sweeping statements about

Wong’s style are easily disproven. For instance, while Days of Being Wild does contain some hand-held camera work and fast-paced “MTV style” editing, it contrasts this sharply with static shots, more fluid camera work (including tracking shots) and long takes. This tendency toward static shots, fluid camera movement and languidly paced editing becomes the dominant stylistic pattern in

~~In the Mood for Love. Hence, Wong’s intentional stylistic shifting from film to film makes it difficult to make all encompassing statements like this about his overall style.~~

~~In his discussion of Wong as an auteur, Sam Rohdie points out that a lot of auteur criticism conventionalises what might otherwise be dynamic styles.22~~

~~He draws attention to the limitations of auteurist studies of filmmakers like~~

Wong. Rohdie argues that most analysis of the director’s style attempts to explain it in very conventional terms. He suggests that as a result a lot of criticism on Wong only superficially addresses the unique and radical aspects of his style. For instance, he notes that characters in his films are frequently read as

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 Howard Hampton, ‘Blur as Genre’ Artforum International 34 (March, 1996) 91-93, Laurence Remila, ‘Godard's Sons: Why Are They All Bastards?’ Vertigo (Great Britain) 1:7 (1997) 21-23, Stokes and Hoover, City on Fire, Ewa Makierska and Laura Rascaroli, ‘Trapped in the Present: Time in the Films of Wong Kar-wai’ Film Criticism 25:2 (Winter, 2000/2001) 2-20. 20 Remila, ‘Godard's Sons’ 22. 21 Remila, ‘Godard's Sons’ 22. 22 Sam Rohdie, ‘Wong Kar-wei, L'auteur’ Iris 28 (Autumn, 1999) 107-121.

48 ‘isolated, separated, adrift in a sad melancholy of disconnection’.23 Rohdie argues that instead of reading the characters in a psychological manner, they should instead be understood as one element of a broader film style that encourages the disconnection and disruption brought about by the medium itself.

Like Rohdie, this thesis shifts the focus of analysis from psychological readings of Wong’s characters to an analysis of how elements of performance can be understood as part of his broader film style. It does this through a focus on the way his film style emphasises the surface of the film image and the mediating properties of the film medium itself.

Curtis K. Tsui, like Rohdie, argues that Wong’s cinema is ‘not a case of style over substance; rather it’s style as substance.’24 The fact that many critics argue that Wong’s focus on style and surface is indicative of superficiality supports Rohdie’s claim that the complexity of his film style is sometimes diminished in analysis.25 Like Rohdie, Tsui argues that if one does not pay close attention to the stylistic aspects of Wong’s films one misses the true depth of his work. This thesis concurs with Rohdie and Tsui’s argument and aims to delve deeply into the surface of the director’s film style, in particular the surfaces of his filmic bodies. As explained in the introduction, the director’s use of the film medium is understood broadly in terms of Lesley Stern’s concept of inflation, that is, a ‘foregrounding of cinematic codes’.26 The thesis builds on a set of traits already established in discussions on Wong’s film style that are drawn together by the common quality of fragmentation.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 23 Rohdie, ‘Wong Kar-wei’ 118. 24 Tsui, ‘Subjective Culture and History’. 25 For example, Hampton, ‘Blur as Genre’ and Remila, ‘Godard's Sons’. 26 Lesley Stern, ‘Putting on a Show, or The Ghostliness of Gesture’ Senses of Cinema 21 (July- August, 2001), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/21/sd_ stern.html [Accessed: March 2007. Web source no longer available].

~~49 Fragmentation~~

~~Fragmentation is one of the most frequently recurring concepts in discussions of~~

Wong’s film style and one central to this thesis on performance in his films. It is therefore worthwhile to look closely at some of the main arguments and conclusions that have been made about the fragmentary qualities of his films.

Fragmentation is discussed in many different guises throughout this literature and manifests in Wong’s cinema through, among other things, narrative, characters, performance, framing, editing and sound.

Abbas describes fragmentation in Wong’s films as an important stylistic trait.27 This is evident, Abbas argues, in the kinds of ‘disappearing’ images that occur throughout his cinema.28 Drawing from Paul Virilio, Abbas explains disappearance as ‘the result of speed, understood both as the speed of historical changes and as the technological speed of information and communication.’29

~~This can be understood in the context of the cultural unease in Hong Kong as it was seemingly rushing toward the historical change of the handover in 1997.~~

Abbas articulates disappearance as a result of speed as ‘the (negative) experience of an invisible order of things, always teetering just on the brink of consciousness.’30 It is this quality of the visually abstract or hard to grasp that

~~Abbas sees as characteristic of Wong’s images. His films, Abbas argues,~~

~~‘invent...a form of visuality that problematizes the visual’.31 Abbas’ description of ‘an invisible order of things…just on the brink of consciousness’ recalls the~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance. 28 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 26. 29 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 48. Paul Virilio, The Lost Dimension (New York: Semiotext[e], 1991) 30 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 48. 31 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 8.

50 theories of Benjamin, Kracauer and Marks. 32 Like Benjamin’s optical unconscious, Kracauer’s material dimension and Marks’ haptic images, Abbas describes images that address spectators’ material sense of the world. This thesis brings Abbas’ understanding of Wong’s fragmented images together with the cinematic theories of Marks, Benjamin and Kracauer.

~~Like Abbas, Jean-Marc Lalanne also sees fragmentation as a central component of Wong’s aesthetic.33 According to Lalanne, fragmentation is key to~~

Wong’s films, arguing that ‘[e]ach film is to be seen as a fragment’, an endeavour ‘dreamed too big to hold together in one piece and of which there remain only bits and pieces’. 34 Lalanne explains further that his films

‘favor…detail above totality, and the part above the whole.’ 35 This understanding of Wong’s tendency to present spectators with incomplete or partial images is central to the analysis of performance in this thesis.

Lalanne also makes an important connection between fragmentation and openness in the director’s work saying: ‘[Wong’s] whole aesthetic project is based on the openness of the work’. 36 Wong himself supports Lalanne’s contention, saying that he sees all his films as ‘like different episodes of one movie.’37 Lalanne describes the fracturing effect of overlapping stories within

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 32 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 48 and Miriam Hansen, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: “The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology”’ New German Critique 40 (Winter, 1987) 179-224, ‘Benjamin and Cinema: Not a One-Way Street’ Critical Inquiry 25:2 (Winter, 1999) 306-343, ‘“With Skin and Hair”: Kracauer’s Theory of Film, Marseille 1940’ “Critical Inquiry 19:3 (Spring, 1993) 437-469, and ‘Introduction’ in Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) vii-xlv, and Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). 33 Jean-Marc Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ in Lalanne et al., Wong Kar-wai 9-27. 34 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 9. 35 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’10. 36 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 9. 37 Jimmy Ngai and Wong Kar-wai, ‘A Dialogue With Wong Kar-wai: Cutting Between Time and Two Cities’ in Lalanne et al., Wong Kar-wai 98.

~~51 and between Wong’s films calling them ‘less stories than crossroads of stories’.38~~

~~Lalanne’s conception of the openness of the director’s films bears similarity to~~

Sophie Wise’s understanding of the quality of ‘limitlessness’ in the fragmented film performances in Hal Hartley’s work. 39 Wise’s conception of ‘limitlessness’ can be reconceived to theorise the quality of openness of incomplete or partial filmic bodies that overlap both within and between Wong’s films. This thesis examines how the openness of Wong’s films, brought about by things never being complete, allows a variety of connections between filmic bodies to be formed across his body of work.

Reading these disappearing, abstract, partial images as part of Wong’s broader film style, the thesis explores how this form of material address based on fragmentation is fundamental to his filmic bodies. The thesis investigates how fractured filmic bodies can be reconfigured by an endless array of connections between disparate scenes, moments or gestures. Importantly, these connections depend on the overlapping of such things as stories and characters. Such overlap comes about through repetition.

~~Repetition~~

~~The critical literature suggests that repetition is a vital form of fragmentation in~~

Wong’s films. Adrian Martin explains how repetition in the director’s films disrupts linearity of narrative.40 In order to do this, Martin makes a connection between Fergus Daly’s comments on the cinema of Hou Hsiao-Hsien and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 9-11. 39 Sophie Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley, Or Rather, What Hal Hartley Likes About Me: The Performance of the (Spect)actor’ in Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros (Eds.), Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and Performance (Sydney: Power Publications, 1999) 249-250. 40 Adrian Martin, ‘Perhaps’ Senses of Cinema 13 (April-May, 2001), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/13/wong-perhaps.html [Accessed: March 2007. Web source no longer available.]

52 Wong’s In the Mood for Love. First, Martin quotes Daly as saying that in Hou’s films: ‘Repetition can thereby undo the linearity of narrative filmmaking, replacing development with passage and modulation. By way of repetition, every axis becomes unhinged.’41 Martin then comments that there is ‘an element of

~~Hou [Hsio-Hsien]…in In the Mood for Love’, classifying the connection as being~~

Wong’s similar ‘focus…on the unspectacular and repetitive gestures, spaces and rituals of everyday lives.’42 He notes that In the Mood for Love is built around a series of repeated gestures linking this element to the films of Hou as well as those of Tsai Ming-Liang. Martin contends that it is only in In the Mood for Love that this element becomes apparent. However, this concern with the repetition of everyday, or what Stern would call ‘quotidian’, gestures is evident from Wong’s second feature Days of Being Wild. 43 Abbas notes the ‘serial structure of repetition’ evident in Days of Being Wild as a ‘hallmark’ of the director’s style.44

For instance, this serial structure is apparent in this much earlier film in the repetition of a similar scene featuring the main character buying a bottle of soft drink three times in succession, each time enacting the same set of habitual actions. Still, as Martin suggests, it is with In the Mood for Love that Wong makes the repetition of everyday gestures the central organising principal. In this film the repetitive bodily motions of the characters work against the linear development of the story as they go about their habitual routines.

~~Janice Tong’s ideas elucidate further just what occurs for spectators in these disruptive moments of repetition. 45 Tong echoes Martin’s explanation of~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. 42 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. 43 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. 44 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 54. 45 Janice Tong, ‘Chungking Express: Time and its Displacements’ in Chris Berry (Ed.), Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (London: British Film Institute, 2003) 47-55.

53 repetition as a fragmenting force in Wong’s films in her description of a form of temporal fracturing that occurs through the repetition of everyday gestures. The focus of Tong’s analysis is the temporal fracturing that occurs through Wong’s use of special effects, specifically step-printed slow motion in a scene in

~~Chungking Express. In the scene Leung Chui-wai moves very slowly in the background while bodies walking by become a blur of speed in the foreground.~~

In order to conceptualise this fracturing, Tong draws from Deleuze’s notion of the time-image described as images that ‘make perceptible…make visible, relationships of time which cannot be seen in the represented object and do not allow themselves to be reduced to the present.’46 Tong comments that in this scene the ‘materiality of time is fractured visually’ through the presentation of two different temporalities in one shot.47 She then briefly indicates how this could also occur through the repetition of everyday gestures saying: ‘This fracturing of time is not only present in special effects shots, but is found throughout Wong’s film; in everyday gestures infinitely mutated with every repetition.’48 While Tong does not define what she means by ‘everyday gestures’ or discuss this further, one could argue that what she is referring to are the kinds of habitual bodily actions that fill Wong’s cinema, such as walking, eating, drinking, smoking and cleaning.

~~Martin also presents a doubling of characters as another form of repetition in Wong’s films that contributes to the disruption of linearity.~~

~~Elsewhere Martin comments that in Wong’s films ‘it is hard to be oneself…all his men and all his women look so alike, and their roles and functions and~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 46 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image [Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta] (London: The Athlone Press, 1989). 47 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51. 48 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51.

54 plotlines blur and merge so easily, so inevitably.’49 In his article on In the Mood for Love he draws on Nicole Brenez’ argument that in Days of Being Wild ‘the double or substitute possesses the same force and the same narrative consistency as’ the central protagonist.50 Arguing that this also occurs in In the Mood for

~~Love, Martin contends that this doubling of characters disrupts linear progression of narrative through what he calls the ‘multiplication’ or ‘reversal’ of figures.51~~

Wong’s use of the double is discussed in this thesis as it relates to his filmic bodies. Doubling is one way in which his filmic bodies depart from conventional constructions of realistic individual characters. This doubling is then investigated for the ways in which it creates fractured and ghosted filmic bodies.

In order to further theorise the effect of these repetitious figures, Martin groups Wong together with Alain Resnais and Raul Ruiz, defining all three filmmakers against what he calls ‘cinema’s incurable romantics’ who come from a ‘humanist’ tradition.52 He goes on to explain this distinction saying:

The difference – a fundamentally philosophical one – is easily pinpointed. Within the humanist view of experience, each individual comforts him or herself with the absolute, irreducible uniqueness or originality of their feelings (however pained) – ‘no one else feels as I do at this moment.’ Another approach is to view all people as figures within a pre-structured game or book of life, the ‘same old song’, as the English version of Resnais’ title (On connaît la chanson, 1998) has it. The question of living then becomes a process of recognising – or surrendering – to this pre-givenness and fundamental non-uniqueness of individual experience, to this ‘eternal return’ which shapes us.53

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 49 Adrian Martin, ‘The Phantom’ in Clare Stewart and Philippa Hawker (Eds.), Leslie Cheung (Melbourne: Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 2003) 23. 50 Nicole Brenez quoted in Martin, ‘Perhaps’. 51 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. 52 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. On connaît la chanson translates literally as ‘same old song’. 53 Martin, ‘Perhaps’.

Similarly, Abbas says that in Wong’s films ‘[d]isappointment is the perception that every origin that we want to believe is unique and individual is already a repetition, like an old song that returns.’54 One could say that much of classical narrative cinema adheres to what Martin calls a ‘romantic’ or ‘humanist’ tradition.

Martin’s distinction between romantic and non-romantic approaches to characterisation and story is important for analysing performance in Wong’s films. Its importance lies in the fact that the ‘non-humanist’ approach encourages a mode of engagement with performance that falls outside the conventional identification with a “realistic”, individual character. Rather than characters that are presented as individuals with unique traits and psychologies of classical cinema, non-romantic characters are presented as figures or recurring types. This means a shift in performance away from the usual projection of unique, realistic character traits towards a focus on the ‘eternal return’ of a set of scenes and gestures.55 Martin describes how Wong presents us with many similar scenes creating the impression of different versions and virtual storylines and suggesting the ‘non-uniqueness of individual experience’.56 As he points out, this quality of the story that easily ‘could have been otherwise’ is an important part of many of Resnais films also, most famously Last Year at Marienbad (1961).57

~~Within this ‘conditional or speculative narration’ repetitive gestures of the performers take precedence over a coherent, linear narrative.58~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 54 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 55. 55 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. 56 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. 57 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. 58 Martin, ‘Perhaps’.

56 This understanding of the connection between repetition and the disruption of linearity is vital to the understanding of Wong’s construction of performance. As Martin suggests, in Wong’s films the spectator’s attention is drawn back to the realisation of the experience of watching a film, and hence to the surface of the film itself, through the disruption of the linear flow, often through the repetition of gesture. Just as Martin asserts, ‘it is hard to be oneself’ in a Wong film so is it hard to see each performance/filmic body as necessarily a distinct or discreet entity.59

In order to examine the affective potential of this fracturing for spectators, this thesis also develops Martin and Tong’s observations, by bringing them together with Stern’s notion of ‘ghosting’ or the ability of repeated gestures to ‘resonate’ with one another.60 Tong’s explanation of this temporal fracturing as a kind of ghosting of the image by previous (and perhaps even future) images is central to this thesis’ argument about Wong’s filmic bodies. As Tong notes, this fracturing of temporality through repetition is enacted through bodily actions, that is, an element of performance. While Tong limits her observation to

~~Chungking Express, in this thesis temporal fracturing is used to understand the effect of the kind of gestural echoing that is found throughout Wong’s cinema.~~

Building on Tong’s analysis, this thesis seeks to explain how this fracturing or echo effect is enacted in Wong not simply through the performers’ gestures alone but rather through an amalgam of cinematic elements such as: setting, framing, speed of film, editing, and pro-filmic elements of the performing bodies such as: modes of performance, bodily action, as well as the pose or bodily !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 59 Martin, ‘The Phantom’ 23. 60 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’ and ‘Ghosting: The Performance and Migration of Cinematic Gesture, Focusing on Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Good Men, Good Women’ in Carrie Noland and Sally Anne Ness (Eds.), Migrations of Gesture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) 185-215.

~~57 attitude of the performer. As this discussion indicates, the concept of the everyday is closely related to performance in Wong’s cinema. While neither~~

~~Martin nor Tong define what they mean by the everyday in their analysis, other critics writing on his films have explored the concept in more detail.~~

~~The Everyday~~

~~The concept of the everyday forms a notable thread in literature on Wong’s films that is also pertinent to this thesis.61 Complementing the work of Martin and~~

Tong, Rey Chow provides a more in-depth definition of the everyday as an important aspect of the director’s cinema.62 Chow is interested in the ways the everyday is represented in both Zhang Yimou’s The Road Home (2000) and

Wong’s In the Mood For Love. Her understanding of the everyday is derived from the theories of filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. According to Chow, in his essay ‘The Cinema of Poetry’ Pasolini argues that film spectators are habituated to a visual mode of reading what he calls ‘brute’ reality. 63 Cinema, Pasolini argues, takes this ‘brute’ reality and builds upon it a ‘(secondary) level of signification’. 64 However this ‘brute’ reality is still present in the cinema and

Pasolini argues that on this level cinema is able to engage the spectator on the level of memory or dreams. Chow argues that this level of engagement occurs in the two films she analyses saying that they both can be understood as part of a ‘a mode of filmmaking’ that ‘consciously deploys everyday phenomena…as its

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 61 Rey Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns: On the Uses of the Everyday in the Recent Films of Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-wai’ New Literary History 33:4 (Autumn, 2002) 639-654, Martin ‘Perhaps’ and Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’. 62 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 639-654. 63 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 640. 64 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 640.

~~58 means of signifying.’65 This view of the director’s approach is consistent with both Martin and Tong’s comments on his use of everyday gesture.~~

Of particular interest for this thesis is Chow’s explanation of Wong’s use of a combination of everyday gestures and filmic technique to focus attention on the body of the actor in movement. Specifically, Chow offers important analysis of the relationship between the everyday, bodily action and the use of slow motion in Wong’s films. 66 Explaining how Wong’s use of filmic slow motion alters everyday gestures in a way that allows spectators to engage with their very material texture she writes:

The technique of slow motion…becomes in Wong’s hands a way of extending the duration and thus of magnifying the granularity of an otherwise automatized, because transitory, set of motions…Wong, like some of the French New Wave directors of the 1960s whose techniques he often borrows, turns such movements into occasions for alternative experience, that of defamiliarizing the nature of (repetitive, habitual) motion through manipulation of its cinema texture and viewing time. 67

In this description Chow pinpoints the way Wong uses the film medium, in this case slow motion, to defamiliarise the familiar because often repeated everyday or quotidian gesture. In this instance we can also categorise the director’s use of the medium in terms of inflation. 68 This process of ‘magnifying’ and

‘defamiliarising’ the everyday is indicative of Wong’s use of the film medium to abstract or distort the performing body. Chow, like Martin and Tong, demonstrates how Wong draws the spectator’s attention to the everyday gesture, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 65 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 640. 66 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 639-654. 67 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 647. 68 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’.

59 or rather the cinematic gesture or the surface of the filmic body. Chow’s understanding of the process by which the performer’s body in movement is brought to the attention of the spectator is vital to an understanding of Wong’s filmic bodies and also to how they might present opportunities for spectators’ affective engagement.

~~In this thesis Chow’s ideas are brought together with those of Hansen,~~

~~Benjamin, Kracauer and Marks. What Chow is describing in the magnifying of~~

‘granularity’ and the defamiliarisation of these everyday gestures can be understood as the potential of the film medium to connect directly to the material dimension or optical unconscious.69 The abstract or distorted image of familiar objects or actions engages the spectator in an active process of deciphering the image. This thesis analyses the ways Wong fractures and abstracts the everyday gestures of performing bodies. The intermingling of the familiar and the abstract is key to these filmic bodies. In Wong’s cinema, the everyday is closely related to notions of temporality. A focus on everyday actions not only creates temporal fractures, it also forms part of his unique approach to alternating rhythm.

~~Temporality and Rhythm~~

Wong’s approach to cinematic temporality and rhythm forms part of the overall fragmentary aesthetic of his film style and is a frequent topic of discussion in the critical literature.70 Tony Rayns examines the director’s unique approach to

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 69 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 647. Hansen, ‘Not a One-Way Street’, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience’, ‘With Skin and Hair’ and ‘Introduction’ and Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art’. 70 For example Tony Rayns, ‘Poet of Time’ Sight and Sound 5:9 (September, 1995) 12, Tsui, ‘Subjective Culture and History’, Chuck Stephens, ‘Time Pieces: Wong Kar-wai and Persistence of Memory’ Film Comment 32:1 (January, 1996) 12-18, Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’, Stephen Teo, Wong Kar-wai (London: British Film Institute, 2005)

~~60 cinematic temporality calling him a ‘poet of time’.71 Rayns notes that there is a sense of ‘time at work: dilating, stretching, lurching, dragging, speeding by’ in~~

~~Wong’s films. 72 He describes the director’s use of jump cuts in Chungking~~

Express and ‘moments of stasis’ in Ashes of Time as specific examples of his playing with cinematic temporality.73 Rayns’ comments that in Wong’s films time both ‘drag[s]’ and ‘speed[s] by’ suggest that shifting pace or rhythm is vital to his depiction of time. As has already been discussed, Tong also notes this juxtaposition in the presentation of two different temporalities in one shot.74 This thesis develops Rayns’ and Tong’s observations on the director’s approach to cinematic temporality through an examination of the shifting rhythms of his filmic bodies.

Critics provide many thought-provoking observations on rhythm and pacing in Wong’s work. Rayns notes how in Fallen Angels ‘[s]cenes turn out to be linked as much by rhythms of movement and by colour as by theme or motif’.75 This is reinforced by Wong’s comment that he often prefers to give his performers only ‘the rhythm of the scene’. 76 This rhythmic emphasis also extends to the director’s instructions to other collaborators. In an interview with

~~Rachael Bosley, Wong’s long-time cinematographer Christopher Doyle explains that ‘music informs the camera’ in all his work with the director.77 Elsewhere~~

~~Doyle states that ‘[r]hythm is basic to the work…There’s a musicality to the image; it’s always a dance, and it’s always abstract, because there’s never a~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 Rayns, ‘Poet of Time’ 12. 72 Rayns, ‘Poet of Time’ 12. 73 Rayns, ‘Poet of Time’ 12. 74 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51. 75 Tony Rayns, ‘Fallen Angels/Douluo Tianshi’ Sight and Sound 6:9 (September, 1996) 42. 76 Peter Brunette, Wong Kar-wai (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2005) 126. 77 Rachael K. Bosley, ‘Production Slate: Infidelity in the Far East’ American Cinematographer 82:2 (February, 2001) 28.

~~61 script.’78 Doyle recounts how during the making of In the Mood for Love Wong~~

‘would often replay the main themes between shots if he felt that I didn’t quite get the pacing of the dolly and slight crane move’.79 Wong himself discusses the importance of music in the way he communicates with Doyle saying: ‘At first, I would tell Christopher about stories, but he always misses the point [s]o I would send him music [and] tell him that this is the rhythm of the film. He picked it up really quickly, because he’s a good dancer, and he knows how to dance with the camera.’80 These comments indicate a symbiotic relationship between director and cinematographer. 81 Similarly, Wong’s comments regarding giving the performers only ‘the rhythm’ of a scene also suggests a degree of interdependence between himself and his collaborators characterises his approach to making a film. As these comments suggest, the performing body, special effects, shot size, framing, camera movement, editing and music all contribute to pacing and rhythm and hence temporality in Wong’s films. Rayns’ comments take place in a short review of Fallen Angels and as such the idea of scenes being ‘linked…by rhythms of movement’ is not developed further.82 This thesis builds on Rayns’ observation through an analysis of the rhythms of

~~Wong’s filmic bodies, specifically the juxtaposition of radically different rhythms.~~

~~Peter Brunette notes the shifting pace of Wong’s films describing how the director contrasts movement and stasis.83 Describing Days of Being Wild,~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 78 S. F. Said, ‘The Eyes Have It: Cinematographer Christopher Doyle Makes the World Afresh With Every Film’ Vertigo 2:8 (April, 2005) 3-5. 79 Bosley, ‘Infidelity in the Far East’ 28. 80 Patricia Thomson, ‘Production Slate: A Jazz Session with Fallen Angels’ American Cinematographer 79:2 (February, 1998) 16. 81 Tony Rayns, ‘It's All About Trust’ Cinema Papers 111 (August, 1996) 28-31 + 62-63 [7p]. 82 Rayns, ‘Fallen Angels’ 42. 83 Brunette, Wong Kar-wai 21.

~~62 Brunette notes how it shifts ‘dramatically between long moments of stasis and sudden, powerful outbreaks of violent movement.’84 Further, he argues that~~

‘[t]his tempo is also manifested in the alteration (sic) between very tight shots and extreme long shots’.85 Brunette appears to be arguing that tempo in Wong is affected by shot size. However, he doesn’t offer close analysis of examples from

Days of Being Wild. This thesis expands on Brunette’s observation to analyse how the shifting tempo of filmic bodies is determined by both shot size and duration in combination with other elements, including the rhythm of the performing body.

Critics have also made connections between shifting tempo in Wong’s films and the context of Hong Kong. David Bordwell connects these shifts in pace back to conventions of mainstream Hong Kong film style. 86 He suggests that this rhythmic pattern could be traced back to a similar structure that occurs in Chinese theatre.87 Bordwell’s analysis of this pattern of shifting tempo will be discussed in depth later in this chapter in the context of the stylistic similarities between Wong and mainstream Hong Kong film style. While acknowledging how shifts in tempo can be placed in terms of Hong Kong cinema, Abbas goes much further.

Discussing the relationship between speed and inertia in Hong Kong cinema as a whole, Abbas suggests that Wong’s use of juxtaposing tempo is both thematically and aesthetically different from Hong Kong cinema more broadly.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 84 Brunette, Wong Kar-wai 21. 85 Brunette, Wong Kar-wai 21. In Film Art: An Introduction Sixth Edition (New York: McGraw- Hill, 2001) David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson argue that ‘a succession of short shots help create rapid tempo, whereas shots held longer tend to slow down the rhythm’ (302). 86 Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong 224 & 278 and ‘Aesthetics in Action: Kungfu, Gunplay, and Cinematic Expressivity’ in Esther Ching-Mei Yau (Ed.), At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) 80-82. 87 Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong 224 and ‘Aesthetics in Action’ 82.

63 Abbas discusses speed in terms of the ‘instabilities of the image, which challenge cognition and recognition’ as well as ‘the weight of dead time’ in moments of pause in Wong’s films.88 Abbas notes how Ashes of Time features radical shifts between ‘blind action’ or ‘blind space’ and ‘dead time’.89 Blind action refers to scenes of furious action where ‘all action has dissolved’ into ‘a kind of Abstract

~~Expressionism or Action Painting’ and bodily actions become ‘non-figurative’.90~~

~~Dead time is characterised by Abbas as the suspension of action usually filled by lengthy scenes of waiting, often filled with everyday actions such as eating and drinking.91~~

This thesis will attempt to show how this violent shifting is central to the way Wong structures performances in his films and is vital to their tactile potential. It builds on the observations of Rayns, Brunette, Bordwell and Abbas through a close analysis of the rhythmic shifting of Wong’s filmic bodies. As

Abbas indicates, Wong’s films are not only filled with moments of dead time but also ‘blind space’.92 Abbas also uses this phrase to refer not only to fast paced action dissolving into a blur, but also to Wong’s broader approach to constructing cinematic space.

~~Space~~

~~Many critics have discussed Wong’s use of space but the most important is~~

~~Abbas.93 Abbas characterises the director’s construction of space as one based on disorientation and discontinuity – or as this thesis understands it, spatial~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 88 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 44 and 60. 89 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 58-61. 90 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 61. 91 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 61. 92 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 59 93 Abbas discusses Wong’s use of space in Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ and ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’.

64 fragmentation. He discusses Wong’s approach to cinematic space under the rubric of disappearance describing his films as ‘the most wide-ranging exploration of Hong Kong’s problematic space.’94 Abbas describes how the director depicts the space of Hong Kong through both the selection of transient, temporary settings and framing and editing that creates spatial disorientation.

Specifically, he describes Wong’s cinematic space as ambiguous or discontinuous.95 Abbas notes the lack of establishing shots of the city and other conventional shots that might produce a clear ‘image of the city’ and orientate spectators.96 He observes that in Wong’s films instead of initial wide establishing shots, space is always ‘presented in fragments and medium shots’.97 Instead of recognisable images of a city he argues, Wong’s films are made up of disconnected, nondescript spaces.98 As Abbas explains, Wong achieves this sense of disconnection and anonymity through both the locations he chooses and the way he chooses to shoot them.

~~In his analysis of In the Mood for Love Abbas notes how most of the film~~

~~‘takes place in interior, or interiorized, space.’ 99 What Abbas means by~~

‘interiorized space’ is that most of the exterior scenes still have a closed in feeling. This is achieved to varying degrees through the choice of exterior settings dominated by walls and narrow walkways, coupled with staging and framing that emphasises exterior walls and obstructions. For instance, in exterior scenes performing bodies are consistently framed against walls as opposed to large, open spaces. This limits the spectator’s view of the surrounds creating a !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 94 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 49. #$ Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 24 & 35 and ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’. 96 Abbas, ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’ 153. 97 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 79. 98 Abbas, ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’. 99 Abbas, ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’ 153.

65 closed in or ‘interiorized’ feel throughout the film. Comments made by Doyle suggest that the locations chosen by Wong shape his film’s cinematic rendition of space in many ways. Doyle states for instance that the framing of an exterior scene could be determined by the fact that what is captured is ‘the only small section of usable street we got’.100 There is a similar focus on interiority in all

Wong’s films, with a focus on interiors and an emphasis on the closed in qualities of exterior spaces. Abbas argues that in Wong’s films each interior(ised) space becomes self-contained, that is disconnected. The interiorised feel of the spaces then grows in part from the choice of setting.

Setting is of the upmost importance in Wong’s films. The director has even said that when planning a film he usually chooses the location first then figures out what kinds of stories would occur in there.101 As Abbas notes,

Wong’s settings are characteristically nondescript.102 Rather than representing the recognisable landmarks of Hong Kong his films take place in ordinary locations. Once again this demonstrates his interest in the everyday. These settings are also transient spaces with the majority of his films taking place in rented rooms, hotels, bars, cafés, restaurants, streets, alleyways and other transient spaces of the modern city. Abbas likens Wong’s use of everyday spaces to an attempt to capture the disappearing space of Hong Kong. This relates to both the impending 1997 handover and the fact that the city itself is always in a state of development with buildings and places constantly being torn down, rebuilt and altered. Wong’s use of everyday settings has been identified as a connecting thread between his style and the work of Michelangelo Antonioni.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 100 Bosley, ‘Infidelity in the Far East’ 26. 101 Joanna Lee, ‘CineVue Interviews Wong Kar-wai’ CineVue 11:1 (1996) 14. 102 Abbas, ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’.

~~66 Robert M. Payne describes one of the settings in Happy Together as~~

‘vast, nondescript, Antonioni-like’.103 While Payne doesn’t push this connection any further, the comparison between Wong and Antonioni may be understood in two ways. First, Antonioni, like Wong, avoids depicting the unique aspects of the cities in which his films take place. Second the work of both directors features many shots of space devoid of human bodies. Several critics have noted these shots, and their similarity to Antonioni’s. For instance, Brunette argues that shots near the end of Days of Being Wild showing the locations where the two characters met in the story emptied of the characters themselves are homages to

Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (1962).104 Frank P. Tomasulo also notes Wong’s ‘highly composed’ shots as well as his use of ‘dead space’ (shots of empty space) comparing them to similar shots of Antonioni’s in his films of the 1960s.105 The

‘highly composed’ quality of Wong’s shots is another example of his inflation of cinematic codes.106 Dead space, like dead time, is marked by the lack of narrative development. Because these shots of space are not strictly determined by the movements of characters or story, as in classical narration, they have a presence of their own. The materiality of objects in the frame is emphasised, as is the materiality of the moving film image.

In this thesis, the word “space” is used to encompass the setting of the film, as well the cinematic construction of space. This thesis seeks to examine the relationship between performing bodies and ‘interiorized’ or closed-in, everyday, fragmented, and repetitious space in the construction of Wong’s filmic

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 103 Robert M. Payne, ‘Ways of Seeing Wild: The Cinema of Wong Kar-wai’ Jumpcut 44 (Fall, 2001), http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc44.2001/payne%20for%20site/wongkarwai1.html. 104 Brunette, Wong Kar-wai. 105 Frank P. Tomasulo, ‘Eros and Civilization: Sexuality and Contemporary International Art Cinema’ Film International 6:6 (November, 2008) 32. 106 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’.

~~67 bodies. It brings together the observations of Abbas and Tomasulo and establishes how Wong’s style differs from classical cinematic space.~~

Specifically, it develops an understanding of the relationship between the fragmented and closed-in feel of cinematic space in terms of how it shapes film performance. Performing bodies negotiate space in Wong’s films in particular ways. By shifting the focus to performance this thesis develops many of the aforementioned ideas on Wong’s cinema, analysing in detail these currently unexplored relationships.

~~Performance~~

While performance has been touched on, there is yet to be any detailed analysis of this important aspect of Wong’s film style. However, critical literature on the director does offer some inroads into considerations of performance that will be developed in this thesis. Emphasis on physicality, lack of psychological expression, and, as we have already seen, a focus on the repetition of everyday gestures, are all noted by critics but for the most part only very briefly. In particular, these elements of performance in Wong have been noted in their similarities to the work of several post-war modernist directors, namely Jean-Luc

~~Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Alain Resnais and Robert Bresson. Such connections suggest useful starting points for placing Wong’s approach to performance in a broader history of film style.~~

Larry Gross, like Chow, connects Wong’s focus on the performer’s body back to the French New Wave. 107 As evidenced in the work of Payne, Brunette and Tomasulo identifying connections between Antonioni and Wong, Gross’s

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 107 Larry Gross, ‘Nonchalant Grace’ Sight and Sound 6:9 (September, 1996) 6-10. Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 640.~~

68 work forms part of an important thread in the critical literature that makes stylistic connections between his work and the work of important modernist filmmakers. In arguing that performances in Wong are similar to those in the films of Godard, Gross makes an important stylistic connection for this thesis.108

Gross points out that Wong, like Godard, uses many of the same performers over and over.109 But more importantly he makes a distinction between a tradition of psychological realism and what he describes as a ‘process by which the director responds to the graphic and behavioural properties of the actor’.110 Gross then positions Godard as an example of this second approach to film performance and argues that Wong ‘has renovated this practice successfully for the first time in 20 years.’111 Gross contends that in many of Godard’s films in the 1960s ‘fiction seems to evaporate in favour of a naturalistic or documentary scrutiny of the fact of the performers themselves’. 112 As Gross goes on to assert; ‘[Wong’s] obsessive attentiveness to the sheer presence of his performers is a key to why these movies work’, pointing to the central role of performance in his films. 113

Again this connection illustrates how directors like Godard and Wong are able to focus the audience’s attention on the performing body. Wong’s approach to film performance can then be located, via such connections, in a cinematic tradition of the physical presence of the performer over the enactment of a clear psychological character.

~~This ‘tradition’ of film performance works in a different way to the conventional ‘text/sign/signification/representation’ model described by~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 108 Gross, ‘Nonchalant Grace’ 9. 109 Gross, ‘Nonchalant Grace’ 9. 110 Gross, ‘Nonchalant Grace’ 9. 111 Gross, ‘Nonchalant Grace’ 9. 112 Gross, ‘Nonchalant Grace’ 9. 113 Gross, ‘Nonchalant Grace’ 9.

69 Thompson, which analyses only the meaning making or representational aspects of film performance.114 Although Gross doesn’t go into specifics regarding elements of style to make this connection, his assessment of both Godard’s and

Wong’s approach to performance is suggestive and prompts further analysis. By attending to film performances that emphasise the ‘graphic and behavioural properties of the actor’ we are able to shift the focus from the “depth” of meaning and representation to the “surface” of the performing bodies in the frame.115 This shift marks a move towards understanding the body of the actor as part of the film image, which is also a shift towards a consideration of the particular materiality of the filmic body – the performing body enmeshed in the cinematic apparatus. However, as the literature shows, this focus on the bodily aspects of performance can also be further qualified by certain bodily modes of performance. Critics have also connected Wong’s approach to performance to the work of Antonioni and Bresson through attention to these modes of performance.

~~Teo describes the way a couple of the characters in Days of Being Wild wander ‘through this lonely landscape’ as ‘Antonioni-like’.116 Later he asserts:~~

‘Wong’s characters are like zombies moving around somnambulistically in a subtropical urban landscape’.117 Rather than exploring the cinematic connection to Antonioni any further Teo links this to the behaviour of characters in Manuel

~~Puig’s ‘Heartbreak Tango’.118 Teo is describing the kinds of emotionally blank performances we find in Wong’s films. As in the films of Antonioni, many~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 114 Grahame F. Thompson, ‘Approaches to “Performance”: An Analysis of Terms’ Screen 26:5 (September-October, 1985) 78-90. 115 Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros (Eds.), Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and Performance (Sydney: Power Publications, 1999) 9. 116 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 35. 117 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 42. 118 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 42.

~~70 performances in his films have the distinct quality of being emotionally expressionless. Elsewhere Teo also characterises this blankness as Bressonian.119~~

~~In discussing the differences between the performances of Jacky Cheung as Fly and Andy Lau as Wah in As Tears Go By, Teo notes that ‘Wong instructed~~

~~Lau to give a Bressonian performance, removing all expression from his face’.120~~

This classification is reinforced by Wong’s comment in an interview long after the film was made that he still didn’t understand Wah’s motivations and that the character remained mysterious even to him. 121 Similarly, Leung Chui-wai describes his approach to playing Chow Mo-wan in In the Mood for Love saying

~~‘I wanted to do [it] as minimal as I could…without any facial expression.’122~~

Importantly Teo contrasts Lau’s Bressonian performance to what he describes as the ‘Method’ performance of Cheung, thus highlighting the way that this creates a level of fracture through the juxtaposition of different performance modes.123

The next chapter will undertake an analysis of the similarities between Bresson and Wong in their approach to film actors as a form of ‘extra daily’ training, as well as the similar blank and automatic quality of performance in their films.124

~~Such gestural echoes form an important point of connection with not only~~

~~Bresson, but Antonioni as well.~~

~~Tomasulo makes a connection between Antonioni and Wong through an analysis of gesture. Discussing The Hand, Tomasulo writes of their common approach to performance noting:~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 119 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 43. 120 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 43. 121 Ngai and Kar-wai, ‘A Dialogue with Wong Kar-wai’105. 122 Trish Maunder, ‘Interview with Tony Leung’ Senses of Cinema 13 (April-May 2011), http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/13/wong-kar-wai/leung/ 123 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 43. 124 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’.

71 Wong uses subtle gestural codes of performance, a la Antonioni, to convey character. At one point, we see Zhang in his workshop, tailoring one of Miss Hua’s dresses. In a subtle sign of his love, he caresses the lining of her garment, a move accentuated by Wong’s use of slow motion.125

Later Tomasulo further classifies this connection as a ‘restrained acting style’.126 Hence he describes a connection between the styles of performance in the work of these two directors, in particular in their focus on subtle, emotionally restrained gestures. These subtle gestures can be understood as falling into the category of the quotidian, the ordinary, the everyday.127 For example, in the last scene in Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960), after discovering him in the arms of another woman, Claudia (Monica Vitti) stands behind her lover Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) and hesitates to touch him. In medium close up she stares ahead blankly then looks down at her lover. A medium close-up of her hand follows as she reaches toward him but stops short of touching him.

Again we see her largely blank face in medium close-up staring ahead and then again looking down at Sandro. It then cuts back to a medium close-up of her hand moving with hesitation as before but this time it comes to rest on the back of Sandro’s head. Importantly, Antonioni does not then cut to a shot revealing the facial expressions of either Sandro or Claudia. Instead he cuts to a wide shot of the two from behind, disallowing a reading of their thoughts or emotions through the face. As this example illustrates, film performance is a combination of performing body and cinematic choices. As Tomasulo’s comments and this

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 125 Tomasulo, ‘Eros and Civilization’ 32. Emphasis mine. 126 Tomasulo, ‘Eros and Civilization’ 33. 127 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’.~~

~~72 example indicate, both Antonioni and Wong share an approach to performance that privileges the gesture over external facial emoting or dialogue.~~

~~Tomasulo points out that in the scene he describes from The Hand,~~

~~Wong uses slow motion to emphasise the gesture even further, recalling Chow’s comments on the defamiliarising effect of slow motion in Wong’s films.128~~

However, what Tomasulo doesn’t explore in this description is the eroticism and tactility of the scene achieved through a combination of the performer’s action and film technique.129 Zhang doesn’t simply “caress” the dress he slowly pushes his hand and arm up inside it while moaning softly in breathless sexual pleasure.

The eroticism is extended cinematically through the use of slow motion. Close scrutiny of the scene shows that rather than “regular” slow motion enacted by the camera, as noted by Tomasulo, the performer slows down action in collaboration with the camera via step-printed slow motion, creating a slightly jittery slow motion. Such slow motion adds a further “texture” to the filmic body, a roughness or jerkiness that is often a characteristic of Wong’s film images. It is this kind of detailed analysis of performance that this thesis seeks to undertake.

As Gross, Teo and Tomasulo’s comments suggest, performance represents a distinctive but hitherto superficially addressed aspect of Wong’s cinema. This thesis develops the observations of these critics into a close analysis of the stylistic qualities of performance in Wong’s films. The next chapter examines many of these observations on performance in Wong in detail

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 128 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 647. 129 At the end of an article on 2046, Teo mentions in passing a connection between Wong and Antonioni on the level of unfulfilled desire. Discussing eroticism in In the Mood for Love and 2046 Teo notes that Wong demonstrates that it is based on an ability to fill one’s desire. He then discusses how this reminds him of a similar depicted of eroticism in Antonioni’s Beyond the Clouds (1995). ‘2046: A Matter of Time a Labour of Love’ Senses of Cinema 35 (April-June, 2005), http://sensesofcinema.com/2005/35/2046/

73 through its discussion of his process and approach to working with actors. All these critics describe his focus on the body of the performer over the emotional and psychological expression enacted through the performer’s face. This thesis analyses how Wong’s focus on the surface of the film image is brought together with bodily modes of performance. As these critics suggest, stylistic connections can be made between performance in this director’s films and a broader history of film style. In order for the analysis in this thesis to locate Wong’s filmic bodies in this way it will be necessary to establish where his style fits in these broader traditions.

~~Situating Wong’s Film Style~~

~~As has been indicated, many critics have made connections between Wong’s film style and particular film traditions and directors including the French New~~

Wave (especially Jean-Luc Godard) and mainstream Hong Kong film style as well as filmmakers such as Resnais, Antonioni and Bresson.130 What follows aims to establish some connections between Wong and broader traditions of filmmaking and by so doing establish the context for this thesis to contribute to the development of a history of film performance.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 130 Rayns, ‘Poet of Time’, Gross, ‘Nonchalant Grace’, Hampton, ‘Blur as Genre’, Stevens, ‘Time Pieces’, Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’, Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong, Remila, ‘Godard's Sons’, Marchetti, ‘Buying American, Consuming Hong Kong’, Martin, ‘Perhaps’, Payne, ‘Ways of Seeing Wild’, Blake, ‘We Won’t Be Like Them’, Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’, Brunette, Wong Kar-wai, Teo, Hong Kong Cinema, Wong Kar-wai and ‘Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love: A Ritual in Transfigured Time’ Senses of Cinema 13 (April-May, 2001), http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/13/wong-kar-wai/mood/, James Hoberman, ‘Reel to Reel: The Films of Wong Kar-wai’ The Village Voice 40 (January 24, 1995) 58 + 60 [2p] and ‘Gay Trippers’ The Village Voice 42:42 (October 21, 1997) 85, Hai Leong Toh, ‘Wong Kar-wai: Time. Memory, Identity’ Kinema 3 (April, 1995) 78-84, and Joelle Collier, ‘A Repetition Compulsion: Discontinuity Editing, Classical Chinese Aesthetics, and Hong Kong’s Culture of Disappearance’ Asian Cinema 10:2 (Spring-Summer, 1999) 67-79. !

~~74 Bordwell’s Art-Cinema Style~~

While Gross, Rayns, Martin, and others make useful connections between Wong and the aforementioned filmmakers, David Bordwell’s category of ‘art-cinema’ offers a way to group these filmmakers together within a common cinematic mode.131 Bordwell proposes a tradition of art-cinema, which works in a very different way to the widespread classical film style, with its own conventions that allow the work of several auteurs to be grouped together, including Resnais,

Antonioni, Godard and Bresson. Though Bordwell does little to examine the historical context from which these stylistic traits emerge, his analysis of the shared formal qualities of these directors’ work provides a useful understanding of the place of these directors in a history of film style. He identifies several conventions that can be found throughout the tradition he terms ‘art-cinema’, such as the establishment of an ‘authorial trademark’, a mixture of ‘objective’ and ‘expressive’ or ‘subjective’ realism, loosening of cause and effect through

‘gaps’ in narrative and characters that lack ‘clear-cut traits, motives and goals’.132 Wong’s films contain all of these elements and they all come to bear on his filmic bodies. Bordwell’s understanding of art-cinema then offers a way to locate the director’s style, and performance within this, in relation to other cinematic traditions.

~~Bordwell argues that art-cinema explicitly addresses the spectator via an~~

~~‘authorial trademark’.133 According to Bordwell, this ‘trademark…requires that~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 131 Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ and ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice’. Bordwell initially uses the term ‘art-cinema’ but in later article changes this slightly to ‘art cinema’. For the purposes of consistency and differentiation from the broader category of art cinema in common parlance, Bordwell stylistic category will here be referred to as ‘art-cinema’.! 132 Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ 207. 133 Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ 211.

~~75 the spectator see [each of the director’s films] as fitting into a body of work.’134~~

~~This also refers to the way spectators are taught the conventions of a particular director’s style and form certain expectations of that style. This authorial mark,~~

~~Bordwell argues, forms an expectation on the part of the spectator that access to the story will be interrupted by certain authorial interventions. Bordwell uses~~

Resnais’ manipulation of time as an example of this, arguing that spectators familiar with his work will expect these manipulations and will also expect that they will occur in a slightly different way in each film.135 Certainly Wong’s cinematic mode encourages spectators to view each film as part of his larger ongoing body of work. Specifically, Wong creates aesthetic connections between his film performances across his oeuvre encouraging spectators to view each filmic body as part of a much larger project. This thesis aims to elucidate the ways in which spectators engage with Wong’s filmic bodies through an engagement with the enduring elements of his film style.

~~Examining the formal aspects of art-cinema, Bordwell explains how~~

~~‘objective’ realism, which was fundamental to neorealist film style in the post- war period, went on to become an integral part of art-cinema style as well.~~

According to Bordwell, ‘objective’ realism is characterised by location shooting and ‘a more tenuous linking of events’.136 These elements are vital to Wong’s film style. These elements can also be found in the work of Godard, Antonioni,

Bresson and Resnais. This is not say that Wong’s films are ‘neorealist’, but simply that some elements of his style can be traced back to neorealism via art- cinema style. Nearly all Wong’s films are shot exclusively on location in ordinary or everyday settings. Bordwell notes a slackening of causal !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 134 Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ 211. 135 Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ 213. 136 Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ 206.!

76 relationships in art-cinema tracing it back to neorealism’s focus on ‘objective’ reality. Deleuze notes a similar slackening of cause and effect relationships in his conceptualisation of ‘time-image’ cinema, which, like Bordwell’s art-cinema, is traced back to a shift in film style in the immediate post-war era.137 Critics have noted the loosening of cause and effect linkages between events in Wong’s cinema.138 His films are characterised by fractured, elliptical and serialised structures that create a loosening of cause and effect relationships between his images. Importantly for an analysis of Wong, Bordwell explains that art-cinema is also characterised by the deliberate distortion of reality by the film medium.

According to Bordwell, expressive or subjective realism refers to a presentation of reality from the subjective viewpoint of a character.139 This expressive realism can however be more ambiguous, not clearly from the perspective of a character but simply marked as mediated or distorted. Wong’s films, like the art-cinema mode described by Bordwell, make use of ‘expressive’ realism as evidenced in the multiple ways he distorts, abstracts and otherwise

~~‘defamiliarises’ his objects.140 However, the ‘expressive’ realism employed by~~

Wong is of the more ambiguous kind. Many of the visual qualities of Wong’s cinema have often been read as reflecting the subjective viewpoint of the character.141 For example, Tong reads Wong’s use of step-printed slow motion in a scene involving Leung Chiu-wai and Faye Wong in Chungking Express as

~~‘render[ing] visually the interiority’ of the two characters.142 However, as Rohdie~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 137 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image [Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta] (London: The Athlone Press, 1989). 138 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’. 139 Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ 207. 140 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 647. 141 Tsui, ‘Subjective Culture and History’, Makierska and Rascaroli, ‘Trapped in the Present’ and Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51. 142 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51.

~~77 argues, his visual distortions could instead be read as part of a broader approach to film style that emphasises mediation itself.143~~

This thesis argues that, departing from a dominant classical style that focuses on making the medium invisible, Wong’s films instead encourage an engagement with the surface of the film image. In this regard, his style also differs from that of the other “art-cinema” directors like Antonioni, Godard,

Bresson and Resnais. Rohdie argues that unlike neorealist influenced modernist directors, Wong’s film images ‘float…toward indistinction’ explaining further that ‘[t]heir quality as images without a referent is stressed.’ 144 Abbas’ description of Wong’s visual style as creating images ‘just on the brink of consciousness’ supports Rohdie’s claim that Wong departs from earlier modernist or, as Bordwell would have it, art-cinema style in his tendency toward the indistinct.145 Rather than analysing performance as the enactment of a character, this thesis attends to the way in which the director’s distorted images construct uniquely fragmented filmic bodies. Bordwell’s account of the differences between characterisation in classical narration and art-cinema provides several useful distinctions.

Defining art-cinema, Bordwell argues that in its approach to characterisation it both adheres to and departs from classical narrative conventions. Bordwell contends that like classical narration, art-cinema relies on

‘psychological causation’ and that ‘characters and their effect on one another remain central’.146 He argues that characters in art-cinema depart from classical narration in some important ways stating that:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 143 Rohdie, ‘Wong Kar-wei’ 118. 144 Rohdie, ‘Wong Kar-wei’ 119 & 114. 145 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 48. 146 Bordwell, ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice’ 153.

whereas the characters of the classical narrative have clear-cut traits and objectives, the characters of the art cinema lack defined desires and goals…Choices are vague or nonexistent. Hence a certain drifting episodic quality to the art film’s narrative. Characters may wander out and never reappear; events may lead to nothing. The Hollywood protagonist speeds directly toward the target; lacking a goal, the art- film character slides passively from one situation to another.147

Bordwell’s comments again recall Deleuze’s description of ‘time-image’ cinema in which he explains characters’ inability to act as the breakdown of the sensory motor schema.148 As Bordwell suggests, the construction of characters with ambiguous motivations contributes to the ‘loosening of casual relations’ or what he calls ‘a certain drifting quality’. 149 Often having ambiguous motivations and lacking clear goals, characters in Wong’s films bear close resemblance to the art- cinema characters described by Bordwell. This similarity then allows Wong’s approach to characterisation to be placed in this broader film tradition.

Bordwell’s description prompts a consideration of the nature of performances that depart from a straightforward function in cinematic narrative. The distinction described by Bordwell also urges the question of how spectators might engage with these performances in ways different from characters in classical narration. While Bordwell himself does not address this question, this thesis explores it in detail by attending to Wong’s filmic bodies as particular combinations of ambiguous characterisation enacted through bodily modes of performance coupled with various forms of filmic fragmentation.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 147 Bordwell, ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice’ 153. 148 Deleuze, The Time-Image. 149 Bordwell, ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice’ 153.

~~79 While Bordwell’s focus is on narrative, not performance, the art-cinema conventions he establishes do allow stylistic connections to be made between~~

Wong and directors such as Resnais, Antonioni, Godard and Bresson. The location of Wong’s film style cannot be limited to its placement in a broader tradition of art-cinema. The relationship between Wong’s film style and mainstream Hong Kong cinema represents the most sustained analysis connecting the director’s style to broader traditions.150

~~Bordwell’s Hong Kong Cinema Style~~

In his comprehensive study of Hong Kong film style, Bordwell offers the most in-depth analysis of its influence on Wong’s style.151 Bordwell’s extensive work on film style represents some of the most detailed and practical analysis of its kind, in particular his analysis of classical narrative style.152 His analysis of

Hong Kong film style is developed from the assumption that classical narrative style is the basis against which all other styles are discussed. 153 Bordwell considers how Hong Kong cinema takes conventions of classical narrative cinema and alters them to fit the production context of Hong Kong. As such, he argues that the fast cutting action films Hong Kong has become well-known for can be understood as the development of the efficiency of Hollywood’s mode of classical storytelling into a more fast paced set of clear and precise images.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 150 Collier, ‘A Repetition Compulsion’, Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong, Payne, ‘Ways of Seeing Wild’, Dissanyake, Ashes of Time. 151 Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong. 152 Narration in the Fiction Film, The Cinema of Eisenstein (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), On the History of Film Style (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging (Berkeley University of California Press, 2005), The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), with Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 (New York : Columbia University Press, 1985), and with Thompson, Film Art. 153 Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong 160.

80 In his discussion of Wong, Bordwell identifies the director’s fragmentary narrative construction, violent shifts of pace, use of voice-over narration and music as stemming from mainstream Hong Kong film style.154 Fast cutting, disregard of the 180 degree rule, on-the-fly creation of story because of a lack of script, violent shifts in pace and a broadly ‘stylized’ visual aesthetic are all noted as common to both Wong and mainstream Hong Kong cinema, particularly the action film.155 For instance, Bordwell identifies violent shifts between stasis and furious action in Wong’s films and in mainstream action cinema. Bordwell argues that in mainstream action filmmaking this practice is used to create

‘clearer and more forceful’ images. 156 However, instead of describing the differences in the way Wong uses these shifts in pace, Bordwell simply says that mainstream directors ‘provided a norm that Wong could revise for his own ends’.157

Bordwell’s ‘pause/burst/pause scheme’ is vital to this thesis’ argument regarding performance in Wong’s films.158 He identifies this scheme or pattern as a unique characteristic of Hong Kong films, especially action films. However,

Bordwell does not develop a clear understanding of this aspect of Hong Kong film style in terms of the influence of local performance traditions. As they relate directly to filmic bodies, such connections are useful for the analysis of performance and as such will be explored further. This thesis builds on

~~Bordwell’s observations attempting to elaborate on this relationship. Drawing from understandings of Chinese opera, the thesis develops the idea of the display~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 154 Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong 272. 155 Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong. 156 Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong 278. 157 Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong 278. 158 Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong 224. Bordwell also discusses this is ‘pause-burst-pause pattern’ in ‘Aesthetics in Action’ 80–82.

~~81 of the performing body that occurs during these pauses. Though Bordwell makes some useful connections between Wong’s style and the broader tradition of~~

Hong Kong filmmaking, unlike Abbas he gives little attention to the ways in which Wong’s cinema departs stylistically from local conventions, except to say that the director picks up on certain mainstream traits and takes them further.

Many of Wong’s departures from mainstream Hong Kong style bear close resemblance to Bordwell’s ‘art-cinema’ tradition. 159 For instance, his inclination towards ambiguous or imprecise images, while fitting with the broadly stylised look of Hong Kong cinema, departs from its tendency to create clear and precise images. Though Bordwell himself does not make the connection, the director’s film style can be seen to be built on a creative melding of these two vastly different approaches to film form. Within this, performance in Wong’s films also combines diverse elements from both traditions. This mixing of styles is evident in the director’s stylistic shifting across his oeuvre.

~~By locating the elements of his stylistic diversity we can start to consider his filmic bodies as manifestations of these stylistic intersections.~~

~~Conclusions~~

The idea of the filmic body represents an important site of intersection – bringing together general stylistic traits, characteristics of performance and the melding of stylistic traditions in examining film performance in Wong’s cinema. This survey of the literature suggests the director’s broadly fragmentary use of the film medium is coupled with largely psychologically opaque, bodily modes of performance. Drawing comparisons between Wong’s film style, art-cinema and

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 159 Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’.~~

82 Hong Kong mainstream film style indicates that his performing bodies and filmic treatment combine aspects of both traditions. Hence, through an understanding of their particular elements we can begin to place Wong’s approach in a broader history of film performance.

This thesis aims to investigate how his broadly fragmented aesthetic; including a distorted visual style, an interest in the part over the whole, repetition, the everyday, fractured temporal and spatial structures and modes of performance come together in Wong’s filmic bodies. The notion of the filmic body then offers a way to extend understandings of performance on screen beyond a conventional approach that limits the potential of performers to the creation of coherent characters as agents in a narrative. Instead we are able to understand the movement of ‘human bodies…within the frame’ as particular configurations of the performing body and the cinematic apparatus, that is, as particular combinations of aspects of style.160 In Wong’s cinema, this mode of analysis also offers a way to articulate the gestural echoing that occurs throughout his cinema. However, in order to understand how these elements work together and how these moving bodies may in turn ‘move viewers’ requires a close analysis of his particular filmic bodies.161

~~In the next chapter, through a detailed analysis of Chungking Express and~~

Fallen Angels, fragmentation is further established as both the central aesthetic trait of Wong’s film style and integral to the nature of his filmic bodies. The next chapter also contends that by attending to this key trait we can start to understand the affective potential of his filmic bodies for spectators.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 160 Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 9. 161 Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 9.~~

~~CHAPTER TWO Film Performance and an Aesthetic of Fragmentation~~

84 First the film’s Chinese title !"#$ [Fallen Angels] rushes across the screen like a train going by, then the sequence begins. We see a woman walking swiftly away from the camera, highlighted by a jerky handheld camera and rapid edits. As she walks with haste through an underground railway station we catch sight of her from several different angles edited together in quick succession creating disorientation as her direction of movement and position in the frame changes with each cut. First she walks away from the camera, then from screen left to centre, then from just left of centre towards the right of the screen, then from far left to centre. Her walking is disjointed by the abrupt edits but the clicking rhythm of her high-heeled step connects the images. There is a sense that she is moving away from us, hard to grasp, escaping behind bits of the mise- en-scene. Another abrupt edit and we find ourselves outside. In the top left corner of the screen we see a train rushing by sped up slightly by the filmic apparatus. Cut to a close shot of a hand reaching through a broken window and grabbing a key off a hook. A shot of the hand coming out of the window on the other side follows. More abrupt edits shifting our position with a slight discontinuity between the performer’s movements from shot to shot. We see only her torso as she swings the key round her finger. She unlocks and opens the door. From inside we see her enter and close the door. Later in the sequence a second character approaches the same location via the same route. In similar shot setups as before we see him from behind walking away, again we are given different angles on his walking, again the continuous rhythm of his step connects across edits, again he disappears behind the mise-en-scene, again the performing body is cut into pieces (hands, torso, etc.). The mirroring of these fragmentary shots and bodily movements allows each movement to “stand out”, to register affectively as a material, performative, filmic event.

~~Ackbar Abbas states that Wong Kar-wai’s cinema is full of images that ‘just miss the mark’; they are allusive, in a constant state of disappearance.1 Sam~~

~~Rohdie too describes Wong’s film images as constantly escaping, saying that if~~

~~‘you try to grasp the image, touch it with your senses, it disappears or migrates’.2~~

For Rohdie, the director produces images that ‘are scoured of clear reference, as if unfocused, or they are filled with possible references, like superimpositions, which overwhelm it with the potential of other images and other meanings.’3 As

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1Ackbar Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ in Jean-Marc Lalanne, David Martinez, Ackbar Abbas and Jimmy Ngai (Eds.), Wong Kar-wai (Paris: Dis Voir, 1997) 45. 2 Sam Rohdie, ‘Wong Kar-wei, L’auteur’ Iris 28 (Autumn, 1999) 109. 3 Rohdie, ‘Wong Kar-wei’ 109.

~~85 this opening description indicates, these escaping and ghosted qualities are equally vital to Wong’s filmic bodies.~~

Wong’s comment that each of his films are ‘like different episodes of one movie’ suggests an approach to filmmaking that is interested in revision and openness rather than completeness and closure. 4 His approach indicates a hesitance to complete a project as well as the inherent interconnectedness of the films in his oeuvre. As was noted in the previous chapter, Wong doesn’t start shooting with a fully developed script. He says of his lack of scripts: ‘I often shoot at the same time that I’m writing the script and I make changes as late as possible.’5 For performers, this means that they often arrive on set without a clear idea of the story or a definite sense of the characters they will be playing.

~~Christopher Doyle, who has served as cinematographer for nearly all of~~

Wong’s films, describes them as ‘only becom[ing] coherent at the last minute’ suggesting that the director’s approach to making a film is one of discovering through process rather than following a strict predetermined plan.6 In discussing

In the Mood for Love (2000), actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai explains that the cast and crew ‘develop everything on the set through shootings’ conceding that ‘the characters change a lot’ during the process of shooting and, it could be said,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 Jimmy Ngai and Wong Kar-wai, ‘A Dialogue With Wong Kar-wai: Cutting Between Time and Two Cities’ in Lalanne et al., Wong Kar-wai 98. 5 Matt Langdon, ‘An Intimate IF Super-8 with In the Mood for Love Director Wong Kar-wai and his Lead Actors Maggie Cheung Man-yuk and Tony Leung Chiu-wai’ IF Magazine ‘Shooting the Mood’ Issue 24, (February, 2001), http://www.ifmagazine.com. [Accessed: September 2004. Web source no longer available]. 6 Ben Walters, ‘Hong Kong Dreaming: Cinematographer Christopher Doyle Talks to Ben Walters About 2046’ Sight and Sound 15:4 (April, 2005) 86. See also: Tony Rayns, ‘It's All About Trust’ Cinema Papers 111 (August, 1996) 28-31 + 62-63 [7p] and Dennis Lim, ‘Glimmer Twins’ The Village Voice 46:4 (January 30, 2011) 62-64. Where Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Maggie Cheung discuss the protracted In the Mood for Love shoot and the lack of information given by Wong.!!!

~~86 editing as well.7 Maggie Cheung said of her experience making In the Mood for~~

Love; ‘[y]ou go back the next day and everything’s changed. You’re doing the same scene again in another dress or on another set, and you’re wondering what’s going to be cut. My character changed at least three or four times during

8 the shoot.’ Doyle attests to the fact that Wong characteristically shoots a lot more than ends up in the final film.9 Cheung is said to have not had a clear idea of the story before seeing In the Mood for Love at its premier at the Cannes Film

Festival.10 Both Leung Chiu-wai and Cheung have said they spent the premiere screening at Cannes looking for all the missing scenes they had shot.11 These insights into the director’s approach show that performance is constructed through the process of filming and editing rather than following a predetermined script or even any fixed idea about characters or story.

Like most auteurist studies, this thesis is concerned with the unique stylistic aspects of the director’s work. However, its focus on film performance as an amalgam of performing bodies and a range of cinematic elements requires attention to the contributions of performers and other collaborators. Wong repeatedly uses the same actors and sometimes casts actors for their similarity to those he has worked with before. He has also worked consistently with other

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 Langdon, ‘An Intimate IF Super-8’. In the In the Mood for Love ‘Making of’ documentary on the Australian release of the film on DVD we get a look at other scenes that were shot but never made it into the film. The documentary indicates how radically the film changed through the process of filming and editing. We see Tony and Maggie dancing and singing in scenes that have the tone of a comedy/musical rather than the melodrama of unrequited love we have in the final film. Released in 2001 by Dendy Films, Sydney. 8 Lim, ‘Glimmer Twins’ 62. 9 Rayns, ‘It's All About Trust’. Doyle talks at length about how Wong’s films are about process, with little to no script and a lot a wasted footage saying ‘we can throw away half the shoot – we usually do – to get there’ (31) and ‘Wong Kar-wai uses only a very small percentage of what we shoot’ (33). 10 Jeffrey Ressner, ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ Premiere 14 (January 5, 2001) ‘Cheung, who didn’t even know the storyline until she attended the debut screening was initially mystified about the missing material. “I can’t erase those images in my mind because we did the scenes,” she says. “Now it’s an interesting element: Did it happen or not?”’ (45). 11 Lim, ‘Glimmer Twins’ 64.

87 important collaborators such as Doyle. Hence, while attending to the collaborative nature of film performance, this thesis uses an autuerist approach to frame these enduring stylistic traits in order to produce a study of the unique attributes of film performance in Wong’s work.

~~This chapter will establish fragmentation as the main aesthetic trait of~~

~~Wong’s filmic bodies through a close analysis of Chungking Express and Fallen~~

Angels, two films that are representative of many of the unique characteristics of his fragmentary film style. It will examine how his approach to the performing body rests on a tendency to break it into pieces and to only ever offer it partially.

In particular, it will attend to how performance, as a key element of his unique film style, works with other elements of film style to encourage spectators to engage affectively with his filmic bodies through various forms of fragmentation. The chapter asks; what are the performative and cinematic elements that make up Wong’s fragmented filmic bodies and how do they work in concert with one another? It also asks, what are the qualities of these filmic bodies that encourage spectators to engage with them as tactile, material filmic objects? Drawing on both performative and cinematic theories, this chapter posits a way of understanding how spectators may engage bodily with Wong’s highly fragmentary filmic bodies.

This chapter posits repetition as having a fracturing effect in Wong’s films, drawing from the observations of Janice Tong and Adrian Martin. Tong and Martin’s observations are brought together with Lesley Stern’s theorisation of the ghosting effect that occurs through repetition of gestures in the cinema. It is argued that in Wong’s cinema the actions of performers are often not self- contained but recall others, causing moments of fracture. Repetition is

88 understood to both rely on and contribute to Wong’s broader fragmented aesthetic. Rather than being linear in their construction, performance in the director’s films is seen to be built around a set of often-repeated fragments that don’t necessarily amount to a complete picture of a character or story. Linking this back to Wong’s approach to making a film, it is suggested that his piecemeal, repetitive approach also produces a tendency toward certain modes of performance.

This chapter identifies and discusses the two prominent modes of performance in Wong’s films, categorised as blank and histrionic. Though modes of performance in his films are quite diverse, it is argued that a tendency toward an emotionally blank, affectless or “Bressonian” mode on the one hand, and a histrionic, emotionally expressive or overtly theatrical mode on the other is evident throughout his oeuvre. It is argued that while these two modes contrast sharply with one another, they also share the common traits of a focus on the physicality of the performing body and a lack of conventional character interiority. It is suggested that both these characteristics put an emphasis on the surface of the performing body and form part of Wong’s broader approach that constructs film performance through several forms of partiality.

In order to propose a way of understanding the effect of Wong’s fragmentary aesthetic in constructing film performance this chapter posits his approach as a violent kind of lesionism. Analysis of particular examples from his films demonstrates the value of performance theorist Josette Feral’s concept of lesionism for an understanding of film performance in the director’s work as well as filmic bodies more broadly. Drawing from Sophie Wise’s use of the concept, the chapter also proposes that fragmentation causes a sense of

89 ‘limitlessness’ in Wong’s filmic bodies.12 The idea of limitlessness is brought together with Jean-Marc Lalanne’s contention that openness is central to the director’s project. The chapter then suggests an understanding of how his filmic bodies overlap with one another through the openness of these lesionistic part- objects.

Laura Marks’ theorisation of the incomplete or ‘haptic’ film image is used to build on Feral’s conception of the fragmented performing body. It is argued that in Wong’s hands the lesionistic filmic body becomes a series of highly haptic images. Through analysis of specific examples, Wong’s filmic bodies are classified as the kind of haptic, tactile images described by Marks.

~~The analysis demonstrates how the director’s fragmented images of performing bodies encourage a tactile, bodily mode of engagement with film performance.~~

Building upon the above theories on the effects of fragmentation, this chapter posits an understanding of Wong’s filmic bodies as tactile, resonant part- objects. It is argued that elements of bodily performance work in combination with other elements of film style to produce his distinctively fragmented filmic bodies. The quality of openness or incompleteness in his films is seen to allow the affective force of bodily actions to travel more readily and be taken up, repeated and built upon at different times and places both within and between his films.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12 Sophie Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley, Or Rather, What Hal Hartley Likes About Me: The Performance of the (Spect)actor’ in Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros (Eds.), Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and Performance (Sydney: Power Publications, 1999) 250.

~~90 Chungking Express and Fallen Angels~~

~~Many of the pertinent traits of Wong’s fragmented aesthetic can be identified in~~

Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1995). This chapter explores the fragmentary nature of his filmic bodies largely through a close analysis of these two films, though crucial examples from his other films will also be discussed.

Like the thesis as a whole, this chapter grapples with the inherent interconnectedness and ghosted nature of Wong’s films, while simultaneously focusing analysis in each chapter on how one or two films represent specific fundamental elements of his fragmentary style.

Chungking Express is a kinetic journey into the lives of two heartbroken cops 223/He Zhiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and 663 (Leung Chiu-wai), a mysterious unnamed woman involved in drug trafficking (Brigitte Lin) and a fast-food counter girl (Faye Wong). As well as loose narrative construction,

Chungking Express is built around disjointed spatial and temporal configurations. The film opens with blurry, movement filled images of crowded, tight city streets. Throughout the film’s opening both performers and camera are restless, neither can keep still.

The opening minute of Chungking Express is indicative of Wong’s approach to capturing the performing body. A handheld camera follows Lin’s character through the crowded streets. The camera is in constant movement and there is an edit every couple of seconds, shifting focus from Lin to the anonymous figures she walks past then back to Lin. Shots featuring Lin are especially frenetic, with the movement of bodies and camera dominating every frame. Over and over again we see Lin – through quick cuts and jittery camera movements – walking quickly, disappearing into an elevator or behind a curtain,

91 and later giving orders, and moving about in an all-together hurried manner. This has the effect of creating disorientation for spectators and presents Lin as a partial, distant figure, constantly escaping the camera’s, and hence the spectator’s, grasp.

~~Lin’s performance in Chungking Express is representative of many crucial aspects of film performance in Wong’s cinema. Lin’s character, like all of~~

Wong’s characters, performs many actions that are in the end pointless and ineffectual. Rather than performing a straightforward set of actions that move toward a clear goal and hence drive the narrative forward, Lin invariably performs actions and gestures that achieve very little, loosening cause and effect.

Like most performing bodies in Wong’s films, Lin’s body is also fragmented cinematically by tight, shaky handheld framing and choppy, at times discontinuous, editing. As in the opening scene from the film, she frequently escapes the handheld frame, by both moving out of it and by the camera shifting its attention away from her. Movements are often cut short by camera movement and editing, creating a disjointed view of bodily actions. As opposed to a match cut, which ensures the continuity of a gesture across an edit, Wong often cuts to a new gesture, sometimes with a slight gap in continuity. This creates the effect of a series of slightly disconnected gestures. As this example shows, the sense of fragmentation in his filmic bodies is produced both by the performer and the cinematic apparatus. Through a combination of these elements Wong constructs filmic bodies as incomplete filmic objects.

92 Howard Hampton describes Lin’s character as ‘an assemblage of evocative scraps’ rather than a fully fleshed out character.13 The raincoat, sunglasses, and wig worn by Lin all operate as references to countless film noirs or crime films. Lin’s character, like many of Wong’s characters, operates as an evocative surface, recalling character types from within and outside his oeuvre.

As Hampton suggests, there is a strong sense in his films of characters being constructed as images, as ‘assemblage[s]’ of disparate film images or ‘evocative scraps’ rather than realistic, psychologically whole, individual characters.14 This is just one level on which these characters operate. They do also function as characters in an unfolding narrative. However, one of the unique aspects of performance in Wong’s work is this strong sense of performing bodies operating as filmic objects, or more precisely as filmic bodies with a focus on tactile surface over narrative depth, that at times competes with conventional narrative concerns.

~~Fallen Angels, like Chungking Express, centres around a set of psychologically opaque characters enacting often ineffectual actions. Fallen~~

~~Angels tells the story of an assassin (Leon Lai) and his business partner (Michele~~

Reis) as well as the story of a young, mute ex-jailbird named He Zhiwu played by Kaneshiro.15 It is also the story of the assassin’s relationship with a highly- strung blonde (Karen Mok) and lastly the story of the ex-jailbird’s relationship with another highly-strung woman, Charlie (Charlie Young).

~~Fallen Angels is the best example in Wong’s oeuvre of his tendency to use the film medium to visually distort and abstract the performing body. In~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 13 Howard Hampton, ‘Venus, Armed: Brigitte Lin’s Shanghai Gesture’ Film Comment 32:5 (September-October, 1996) 42. 14 Hampton, ‘Venus, Armed’ 42. 15 He Zhiwu is also Kaneshiro’s character’s name in Chungking Express.

93 Fallen Angels a wide angle lens, usually reserved for wider shots, is used for medium and close shots, which has the effect of enlarging and distorting the performers’ features making them appear like bugs under a microscope. The textured, distorted images of performing bodies created by the director through the unconventional use of a wide angled lens are representative of his broader approach to constructing filmic bodies as abstract, tactile surfaces. Through modes of performance and the use of the film medium Wong’s films put emphasis on the tactile surface of images of performing bodies – that is, the materiality of filmic bodies.

~~Made from pieces of story left over from Chungking Express, Fallen~~

~~Angels is a good example of Lalanne’s classification of Wong’s films as~~

‘dreamed too big to hold together in one piece and of which there remain only bits and pieces’.16 Many elements from Chungking Express – bits of story, character, setting and gesture – recur and vary in Fallen Angels. For instance,

Kaneshiro plays a character named He Zhiwu in both films, though they are clearly marked as different characters. However, Wong creates several associations between the two He Zhiwu characters. They are both dumped by their girlfriends and spend a long time pining for them. The He Zhiwu in

~~Chungking Express eats 30 cans of pineapple and makes himself sick, while the~~

~~He Zhiwu in Fallen Angels supposedly became mute after eating a can of pineapple as a child. In Fallen Angels Kaneshiro also momentarily re-enacts~~

~~Faye Wong’s dance with the sauce bottles at the Midnight Express from~~

~~Chungking Express. This doubling reflects Wong’s tendency to create recurring types rather than realistic individual characters. Read together Chungking~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 16 Jean-Marc Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ in Lalanne et al., Wong Kar-wai 9.~~

~~94 Express and Fallen Angels evidence the fundamentally interconnected quality of~~

~~Wong’s oeuvre, the sense of incompleteness, overflow and repetition from one film to another.~~

~~Repetition as Fracture~~

Wong’s performers are often repeating themselves. They also repeat each other both within his films and across the tapestry of his film work. Repetition is vital to Wong’s filmic style and to the way performances are constructed in his films.

Chungking Express and Fallen Angels are both pertinent examples of this tendency. Importantly, critics have identified repetition as a unique and fragmentary element of Wong’s film style, in particular in relation to performance. Analysing the director’s approach to cinematic temporality, Tong identifies this important aspect of gesture in his films.17 Tong notes that in

Chungking Express a ‘fracturing of time’ occurs through the repetition of everyday gestures. 18 This ‘fracturing’, brought about by the repetition of gestures, describes the potential for different moments of performance to operate simultaneously via a kind of layering effect. 19 Martin identifies a similar fracturing effect in Wong’s films coming about through the repetition of gesture as the disruption of linearity.20 The repetition of everyday bodily actions is then an important element in the construction of the director’s broadly fragmented filmic bodies.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Janice Tong, ‘Chungking Express: Time and its Displacements’ in Chris Berry (Ed.), Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (London: British Film Institute, 2003) 47-55. 18 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51. 19 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51. 20 Adrian Martin, ‘Perhaps’ Senses of Cinema 13 (April-May, 2001), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/13/wong-perhaps.html [Accessed: March 2007. Web source no longer available.].

95 Lesley Stern’s argument about the ability of gestures to resonate through a process of repetition supports Tong and Martin’s observations on the effect of the repetition of gestures in Wong’s films.21 Stern’s understanding of how gestures resonate describes a similar layering or ghosting effect whereby gestures and moments are not self-contained and a kind of temporal fracturing occurs. Further, her assertion that repetition allows a gesture to ‘come…into focus…as a gesture’ describes how such fractures encourage spectators to engage with filmic bodies as material events.22 Stern’s understanding of the effect of repetition in film performance articulates the way bodily action can be foregrounded, highlighted or magnified as a physical or material event in a similar way to cinematic techniques such as framing and slow motion. Stern’s ideas allow us to push Tong and Martin’s observations of the fracturing that results from the repetition of everyday gestures further and understand how we as spectators may engage with them as a kind of material force or presence.

~~These repetitions occur both within and between Wong’s films.~~

A good example of Wong’s emphasis on the repetition of everyday actions in Chungking Express is a series of scenes where Cop 663 (Leung Chiu- wai) visits the Midnight Express. Every time he visits the Midnight Express he approaches in the same way, with similar shot setups and gestures, taking off his hat and smoothing his hair. Three similar scenes of 663 visiting are cut together one after the other enhancing the sense of repetition and temporal condensation.

~~In each version Faye (Wong) cleans one thing or another as 663 approaches. The~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Lesley Stern, ‘Putting on a Show, Or the Ghostliness of Gesture’ Senses of Cinema 21 (July- August, 2002), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/21/-sd_stern.html [Accessed: March 2007. Web source no longer available.]. 22 Lesley Stern, ‘Ghosting: The Performance and Migration of Cinematic Gesture, Focusing on Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Good Men, Good Women’ in Carrie Noland and Sally Anne Ness (Eds.), Migrations of Gesture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) 203.

96 same song, ‘California Dreaming’ by The Mamas and the Papas, plays through each iteration of the scene. A strong sense of repetition is conveyed not only through the music but also through repeated framings and gestures. The scenes become a formalised performance, he approaching removing his hat and smoothing his hair, she evading him by cleaning different surfaces. The scenario occurs over and over, repeated yet varied slightly.

The series can be broken down into six identifiable instances of 663 visiting the Midnight Express. The first instance of the scene starts with a mid shot of 663 from what appears to be behind the counter at the Midnight Express looking out onto the street. He writes a report and lodges it, as we have seen another cop character do before in Wong’s Days of Being Wild (1990). He then walks toward the camera into a close-up. As he gets close to the counter he removes his hat and smooths his hair. Looking directly into the camera and raising his voice to be heard over ‘California Dreaming’ playing loudly on the stereo, he orders a take-away chef’s salad. This first shot is repeated almost exactly in both framing and sequence of gestures in two other scenes of 663 visiting the Midnight Express. In the first version of the scene, the shot that follows is a mid shot of Leung Chiu-wai from behind and Faye, facing the camera from behind the counter. She barely looks at him while they talk, eyes down, nodding and swaying to the music. He asks her several questions to which she mostly responds with nods while bobbing her head to the music. In response to Faye’s question ‘what do you like?’ Leung Chiu-wai gestures with his right hand for Faye to move closer. Wong puts emphasis on this gesture by presenting only Leung Chiu-wai’s hand and forearm in a close-up. The shot continues and the performers move their heads toward one another into the shot. They are

~~97 viewed in profile in close-up as Leung Chiu-wai responds dryly ‘A chef’s salad’.~~

There is a sense of stylisation to both the shot and the performer’s movements that could be categorised as ‘inflation’, that is calling attention to the film medium itself.23 It then returns to the mid shot facing the counter as the cop gets his chef’s salad and leaves as Faye sways to the music and laughs sarcastically.

What follows is a jarring cut to the beginning of the next rendition of the scene. The same song is playing but at a different point in the song, which contributes to the temporal rupture caused by cutting together two very similar scenes. Again we see Faye in medium close-up dancing this time with a sauce bottle in one hand and a funnel in the other moving them up and down to the beat of the music then filling up the sauce bottle. Again 663 is shown in mid shot lodging his report but this time from an almost reverse angle, with the Midnight

Express out of focus in the background. Seeing 663 coming, Faye dances toward the back of the shop and watches him as he orders another chef’s salad. As she watches him leave there is an abrupt edit followed by a shot of him arriving at the beginning of the next scene. In an exact repeat of the first scene, he lodges his report then heads straight to the Midnight Express walking from a mid shot to a close-up as he removes his hat and smooths his hair. In the next shot we view

Faye in medium close-up in the foreground cleaning a large glass window, her back to the camera, with 663 in the background in wide shot once again standing at the counter facing the camera. The glass window creates a visible partition between the two characters. The shot itself is a repetition of another shot earlier in the film featuring Cop 223 and a different worker at the Midnight Express.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 23 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’.~~

98 In Chungking Express, Faye Wong’s character is constantly moving, working, dancing, and cleaning. Her quotidian cleaning gestures are repeated and varied during several visits from 663 to her place of work. These cleaning gestures are everyday motions repeated and varied (as in Tong’s observation).24

~~These actions set the “rhythm” for their interactions. They also create a rupture in the linear flow. The actions are both happening and have already happened.~~

The song being played and the gestures are the same but both the position in the song and Faye’s position in the shop varies from scene to scene. Shot setups, bodily motions and edits are repeated time and again shifting our attention to the enactment of the movements themselves. In a similar way to Brenez’s ‘extra gesture’, the repeated configurations of shot, edits and gestures in these scenes function beyond narrative and instead come to exist ‘as [filmic] gestures’.25

~~What this means is that the layering or fracturing that occurs emphasises the materiality of these filmic gestures.~~

Two sequences from Fallen Angels depicting Lai and Reis visiting the same locales through a mirrored set of actions and shots are also representative of the director’s tendency to construct performances around the repetition of sets of everyday gestures. In the sequence from Fallen Angels described at the beginning of this chapter, two performers enact the same set of bodily actions.

Some actions are repeated while others are reversed, that is, done backward. For instance, whereas one closes the window the other opens it. Again it is these recursions and reversals that determine the vital rhythm of the performances in the sequence. Wong even repeats the shot of the elevated train line as a train goes !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51. 25 Nicole Brenez, ‘“Die for Mr. Jensen”: Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence’ [Translated by Fergus Daly and Adrian Martin] Senses of Cinema 16 (September-October, 2001), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/16/cassavetes _jensen.html [Accessed: March 2007. Web source no longer available]. Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’.

99 by, though in the second instance it is a wider shot and canted to the right. Both characters also reach into the same broken window for the key, unlock the door and enter. In these and many more scenes and sequences from Wong’s oeuvre there is a registering of bodily actions as material events through the process of repetition.

~~The cumulative power of repetition occurs not only within Wong’s films, but also through connections between his filmic bodies from film to film. As~~

Ebert rightly observes, Wong’s films are not ‘self-contained’.26 The same or similar performers, character types, stories, scenes, settings, shots, edits and gestures are just some of the repetitious aspects to recur between his films. He has a number of performers that he uses repeatedly across his work. Leung Chiu- wai for instance, appears in seven of Wong’s ten features to date. Not only this, but different performers are also used to present variations on recurring character types, scenes and actions. As Brenez points out, the doubling of characters in

Wong’s films usually gives the double as much narrative weight as the central protagonist.27 In fact there is no original protagonist from which the double emerges, but merely many variations on types. As Martin explains, this ruptures the image of characters as realistic individuals.28 For instance, in Chungking

Express both Leung Chiu-wai and Kaneshiro play lovesick cops who have been dumped by their girlfriends. These are variations on the lovesick cop; also seen in the form of Andy Lau’s Tide character in the director’s earlier film Days of

~~Being Wild.~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 26 Roger Ebert, ‘2046’ Chicago Sun-Times (September 2, 2005), http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050901/REVIEWS/50822004/1023 27 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. 28 Martin, ‘Perhaps’.

~~100 Fallen Angels was made from stories left over from Chungking Express.~~

~~Like Chungking Express, Fallen Angels is set around Chungking Mansions and~~

Kowloon with stories centring on crime and lost or unrequited love. Most of the characters in both films remain distant, mysterious, and opaque. Both films repeat and vary scenes both within and between them. For instance, in the brief moment He Zhiwu dances with a bottle of sauce in each hand alternating between lifting and lowering them while shaking his body side to side, re- enacting Faye’s dance at the Midnight Express in Chungking Express. The reverberations Wong sets up both within and between his films creates a strong sense of interconnectedness and encourages spectators familiar with his work to make connections, specifically between one performance and another.

2046 (2004) offers the best example in Wong’s oeuvre of repetition from one film to another. In 2046 Wong repeats whole configurations of bodily action and cinematic choices from In the Mood for Love. For instance, both films contain a medium close-up of a woman wearing a cheongsam shot in profile as she glides along an exterior wall. Both shots take place at night. In both films the shot is close, centred on only the lower torso and thighs of the performer. Both are shot on a diagonal and both use slow motion to magnify the physicality of the body in motion. Both of these images, or filmic bodies, inevitably evoke their repetition. As such there is a fracturing effect that occurs in 2046 as configurations of bodily action and cinematic rendition resonate and recall aspects of filmic bodies across Wong’s oeuvre.

~~Perhaps the most interesting evocation that occurs in 2046 is through Leung~~

~~Chiu-wai’s character Chow Mo-wan who has the same name as his character in~~

~~In the Mood for Love. The character also has some similar biographical details;~~

~~101 he is a writer, he has just come back from Cambodia and he had an unsuccessful affair with a married woman named So Lai-Chen. However, the man we meet in~~

~~2046 is drastically different from the kind, reserved, and polite man we knew in~~

In the Mood for Love. In 2046 Chow is a callous and selfish womaniser and party boy. One could easily give this a psychological reading as “character development”. Teo is one of many critics who applies a psychological reading to

~~Leung Chui-wai’s performance in 2046 noting that:~~

Chow’s change in character from In the Mood for Love to 2046 is quite stark: he now sports a dandyish moustache and is an inveterate womaniser and peeping tom, quite a contrast from his persona in the previous film, where he is plainly a cuckold and something of a wimp. Time has clearly transformed Chow Mo-wan.29

But something in the enactment of Chow in 2046 is a mismatch with the character in In the Mood for Love, making this psychological development reading unconvincing. This relates to Brenez and Martin’s discussion of doubling.30 Like the doubling of Kaneshiro’s He Zhiwu in Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, there is a fracture caused by the similarity of the name, the performer and certain biographical details. However, while the He Zhiwus are more clearly defined as different characters, Leung Chiu-wai’s Chows operate as more ambiguous variations on the same character. Comments made by Leung

~~Chiu-wai lend credence to this alternate reading of this performance. Speaking of how Wong instructed him Leung Chiu-wai says:~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 29 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 142. 30 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. Where Martin quotes Brenez on doubling.~~

102 He asked me to do the same character, but in a very different way. That character was already inside me – his body language, his kind of tempo, his voice. Now with almost the same background, same costume, and same name, he asked me to play somebody else, like a new man.31

Elsewhere Leung Chiu-wai also says that Wong wanted ‘a different interpretation’ of the Chow character for 2046.32 Both these comments indicate a level of consciousness of performance in the director’s approach. Instead of reading Chow in 2046 in terms of the development of a realistic character it can be understood as a performative variation on character or type. This doubling is part of Wong’s broader tendency to construct characters as types rather than realistic, psychologically whole individuals. This deliberate mismatching between the characters encourages a powerful resonation rather than strict continuation between them.

There are two similar scenes from 2046 that are especially “resonant” of moments from other films. As indicated in the description that opens the previous chapter, 2046 presents us with two similar scenes of Chow readying himself for a night out on Christmas Eve. Most obviously, these scenes recall the final scene from Days of Being Wild, which also features Leung Chiu-wai.

~~However, it is not merely the fact that the same performer enacts the scenes that~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 Martha P. Nochimson, ‘Lies and Loneliness: An Interview with Tony Leung Chiu Wai’ Cineaste 30:4 (Fall, 2005) 16. 32 Jean-Pascal Grosso, ‘In the Mood for Talk’ Cover (2004) 78. Where Leung Chiu-wai says of making 2046: ‘The first day I arrived on the set, [Wong] Kar-wai said he wanted me to portray the same character I portrayed in In the Mood for Love, the same Mr Chow, but with a different interpretation’ (78). Roger Ebert also picks up on this saying ‘2046, Wong’s new film, an indirect, oblique continuation of the earlier one. It stars Tony Leung as Chow Mo Wan, also the name of his character in In the Mood for Love, and there is a brief role for Maggie Cheung, his co-star in that film; they are not necessarily playing the same characters’. ‘2046’ Chicago Sun- Times (September 2, 2005), http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050901/REVIEWS/50822004/ 1023. Emphasis mine.

~~103 makes them resonate with or recall one another. In the last scene from Days of~~

Being Wild it is a combination of lack of any knowledge of the character, the slightly obscured performer, the automatic quality of the actions and the single take that lends the filmic body a partial quality. This partial quality is vital to the filmic body in this scene resonating in 2046; as it is incomplete it leaves itself open to variation.33 In all three scenes the performer’s actions are fluid and have a strong feeling of automatism about them, each one flowing into the next. The closeness and clutteredness of the spaces also connects these moments of performance. Just as happens within many of Wong’s films, he manages to create resonations or fractures between his films via a combination of cinematic techniques and elements of bodily performance.

~~Beyond its connection to Days of Being Wild, there are perhaps less direct resonances that find their way in as well, including with Chungking~~

~~Express. For instance, these scenes from 2046 recall gestures in Chungking~~

~~Express first and foremost through the use of a prop, the hand towel. The way~~

~~Leung Chui-wai folds it neatly and places it on the table in 2046 recalls his gentle relationship to a similar towel in Chungking Express. In a scene in~~

Chungking Express Leung Chui-wai folds a small towel in half and then in half again and places it gently on the couch. This gesture is almost identical to the one in the scene from 2046. It is not the mere fact that it is Leung Chui-wai who handles the hand towel in both instances but the way he folds it and the delicacy, care and automatism with which he does it. In the scene in Days of Being Wild

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 Wong Kar-wai, ‘Tony Leung’ Interview 35:8 (September, 2005) 196-201.Tony Leung Chiu- wai makes a connection between these two scenes saying: ‘I was so sad when we knew we had to give up on “Days of Being Wild, Part 2” because of the market then. I felt something incomplete in my career. I’ve been trying to have the chance to play a gambler again, and 12 years later, it happened in 2046. I tried to imagine these two characters as one onscreen. The last scene in Days of Being Wild and my first scene can be glued together as if they are happening on the same night. But in life, there is a 12-year difference’ (198).

~~104 Leung Chui-wai folds a pocket-handkerchief with similar care. The scene from~~

~~2046 also subtly evokes Leung Chui-wai’s getting ready at the end of Chungking~~

~~Express to go on a date with the girl he met at the Midnight Express (Faye~~

Wong, whom incidentally he is also going to meet for dinner in one of these scenes from 2046). The care, neatness and automatism of Leung Chiu-wai’s bodily motions in 2046 again recall this earlier scene. As evidenced in these examples, Wong creates gestural connections or threads that are worked through again and again across his oeuvre.

Variations on similar configurations of characters, scenarios, cinematic choices and movements, gestures and attitudes of performing bodies recur throughout Wong’s body of work, creating resonances with one another. It is not just the recurring performer from film to film but their particular cinematic rendition across the expanse of his work that encourages spectators to engage affectively with these filmic bodies. That is, the affective force of cinematic gestures is taken up not only by the same performer but also by different filmic bodies through its particular performative and cinematic resonance.

Wong’s recurring use of similar character types, stories, performers, settings, and even shot setups and actions, all support the material and evocative power of moments of performance that bear similarity to other, earlier moments.

As Stern contends, it is precisely in the ability of gestures to travel and be evoked in different times and places that their potential to be affective for spectators lies.34 This chapter argues that by formulating an understanding of the affective potential of Wong’s fragmented filmic bodies more broadly, a better

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 34 These ideas could be extended to discuss the way the scenes shot and left out of Wong’s films “ghost” the narratives and performances in the final films. The large amount of unused footage is evidenced by the tired and automatic quality of the performers’ gestures.

~~105 understanding of the affective potential of the fracturing, disruption or ghosting, described by Tong, Martin and Stern, can be reached.~~

~~Wong’s approach to making a film tends to create overflow. His films are~~

‘dreamed too big’ as Lalanne describes it, and continually overflow into one another.35 Importantly, a sense of incompleteness creates a context for the repetition and revision of many elements both within films and from one film to another. As Leung Chiu-wai’s comments on delivering ‘a different interpretation’ of a character suggest, Wong’s repetitious approach to constructing filmic bodies could also be seen to foster a context for certain modes of performance to become more prevalent than others.36 Importantly, these modes contribute to the fragmented quality of his filmic bodies.

~~Performance Modes: Blank and Expressive~~

Wong’s approach of working out a film ‘through shootings’, that is, through different versions of characters, scenes, stories and gestures, results in modes of performance that depart from a conventional focus on the representation of a realistic individual character.37 As has been outlined, while there is variation in the type or mode of performance in his films, the most prominent traits of performing bodies throughout his oeuvre are affectlessness or emotional blankness on the one hand and an overly emotionally expressive or histrionic quality on the other. These two modes contrast sharply in many ways but can be seen to share the traits of a focus on the physicality of the performer’s body and

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 35 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 9. 36 Grosso, ‘In the Mood for Talk’ 78. 37 Langdon, ‘An Intimate IF Super-8’.~~

~~106 opacity in terms of the realistic and unambiguous projection of the character’s inner thoughts or emotions.~~

In Wong’s films, divergent modes of performance are one of the ways performing bodies themselves contribute to the fragmented quality of his filmic bodies. Teo argues that in Days of Being Wild contrast is set up through performance style, stating:

Jacky Cheung in fact gives a purely emotional performance that is plumbed from something deep inside, his face engraved with pain and sickness of the longing for love. It is a great performance that leaves its impression on the audience long after the film has finished. Cheung’s acting style clearly derives from the Method school when contrasted with Andy Lau’s approach. Wong instructed Lau to give a Bressonian performance, removing all expression from his face and concentrating emotion inside instead of letting it burst out. It is an intimate performance, which characterizes the tone of the film. 38

~~What is interesting is that Teo points out that one acting style can be more clearly seen or defined in relation to the contrasting style of a fellow performer.~~

This suggests that the differing performance modes in Wong’s films create a context where performance becomes foregrounded as performance. This shifting of performance modes can be seen in all the performances in Chungking Express and Fallen Angels.

~~Stern’s categories of quotidian and histrionic performance are useful here in describing the performative shifts we encounter in Wong’s films.39 Leung~~

Chiu-wai’s performance in Chungking Express, for instance, shifts between quotidian (naturalistic) and histrionic (theatrical). In his disappointment at !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 43. 39 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’.

107 thinking his girlfriend had returned to him only to discover this wasn’t so, he emotes his sadness with a naturalistic but subtle fall of his shoulders and lowering of his head. Leung Chiu-wai also performs 663’s grief theatrically through his counselling of his household items. Holding his soap gently he tells it how it has lost weight and encourages it to have more confidence in itself.

Inspecting a wet dishcloth he asks it to stop crying. In these moments performance enters the realm of the histrionic or overtly theatrical. While there are some instances in Wong’s films of conventional “realistic” expression of characters’ thoughts and emotions, performances are for the most part characterised by distinctly psychologically opaque modes of performance.

Dennis Lim describes Wong’s direction of actors as ‘instructing his actors not to act.’40 The director himself concedes that this approach is ‘very challenging…for actors’, explaining that in the shooting of In the Mood for Love

Leung Chiu-wai and Cheung ‘both went through a period of trying to do something to prove they were acting but I kept telling them not to’.41 Rather than take on a role Wong instructs performers to ‘play themselves’.42 In order to understand these comments one must bear in mind the unique process by which

Wong’s films come together. First, as indicated earlier, all of his Hong Kong features lacked fully formed scripts. Stories and characters are instead worked out through the process of filming and editing.43 Second, since there is not a fully formed story or characters, performers often try out several different variations of scenes, stories and characters, rarely knowing which parts will be included in

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 40 Dennis Lim, ‘Glimmer Twins’ The Village Voice 46:4 (January 30, 2001) 62. 41 Lim, ‘Glimmer Twins’ 62. 42 Leon Forde, ‘Close Up on Wong Kar-Wai’ Screen International 1284 (November, 2000) 23. 43 Rayns, ‘It's All About Trust’ and Langdon, ‘An Intimate IF Super-8’.

108 the final film.44 Finally, scenes are commonly built around the enactment of everyday gestures or as Leung Chiu-wai puts it: ‘I just focus on eating the celery on the table or pouring the wine.’45 As this suggests, performance in Wong’s films is shaped through a collaborative process of repetition and variation that frames performance as something other than the acting out of a character. Rather performance is something more obscure that the performer brings to the creation of Wong’s filmic bodies.

~~Wong’s approach to casting signals the importance of the performers’ contribution. On casting actors Wong says:~~

Normally, people have a script, and then they start to cast. They think, ‘Who would be the best person for that character?’ And the actor or actress tries to act for that character. But, in my case, I always have actors in my mind. And I am not trying to give them a role, I am trying to get something out of them.46

Elsewhere he similarly refers to his approach to performers as trying to ‘borrow something of theirs’.47 These comments and his approach to directing actors suggest that he views his performers as important participatory entities in the filmmaking process. This supports Gross’ categorisation of Wong’s approach to directing performers as a matter of ‘respond[ing] to the graphic and behavioural properties of the actor’, which importantly Gross opposes to a tradition of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44 Lim, ‘Glimmer Twins’ 62 and Ressner, ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ 45. 45 Wong Kar-wai, ‘Tony Leung’ Interview 35:8 (September, 2005) 198. 46 Peter Henne, ‘Creating a Mood’ The Film Journal 104 (February, 2001) 16. Emphasis mine. %&!Lim writes in ‘Glimmer Twins’ that ‘Cheung and Leung… credit [Wong] as their “acting teacher”’ (62) saying that ‘for In the Mood for Love his direction consisted largely of instructing his actors not to act. “It’s a very challenging film for actors,” Wong explains. “These are the most boring parts they could get – normal people, thirtysomething, married, nothing colourful or heroic. They both went through a period of trying to do something to prove they were acting but I kept telling them not to, because the whole point was to borrow something of theirs. I didn’t invent a character and look for an actor to play it. It wasn’t a case of casting the right person for the role. We already had the actors; everything was custom-made for them’ (62).!!

~~109 psychological realism in film acting.48 Without the structure of a well-defined story or character, performances are instead psychologically ambiguous and built around sets of physical actions.~~

One of the most prominent modes of performances in Wong’s films can be classified as blank and automatic. In order to get what he wants from his actors, the director has said that he seeks to tire them out, often through repeated takes.

In an interview he says of his actors: ‘[b]ecause most Hong Kong actors come out of TV, and they’re used to close-ups. I wanted to get a different kind of performance…not so self-aware. So I had to make them feel very tired.’49 This approach recalls that of Robert Bresson in that he too would require performers to do actions over and over in order to make them automatic.50 For Bresson, this practice was meant to draw out the habitual nature of gestures, to remove the actor’s intention as ‘[a] way of recovering the automatism of real life.’51 Wong’s choice to have actors go through the same scenes and gestures countless times comes from a desire, like Bresson, to overcome actors’ propensity for showing internal struggle through an external emoting, mostly through the face. Wong sees this propensity as something many of his actors have learnt working in television, stating:

Today, there are 2 different kinds of acting. There are actors who get used to television [who] are very concerned about the emotions they !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 48 Larry Gross, ‘Nonchalant Grace’ Sight and Sound 6:9 (September, 1996) 9. 49 Fredric Dannen and Barry Long, Hong Kong Babylon: An Insider’s Guide to the Hollywood of the East (New York: Hyperion, 1997) 147. 50 Robert Bresson, Notes on Cinematography (London: Pluto Press, 1977) 12 and 32. 51 Bresson, Notes on Cinematography 8 and 32. This sense of the character stripped of intention can be connected back to Deleuze’s notion of time-image cinema as a cinema of the seer. In what Deleuze describes as the breakdown of the sensory-motor schema the seer does not reach goals or impact on the narrative in the same way as characters in movement-image cinema. Instead the seer is a witness to events, rather than a catalyst for them, the story happens to them. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image [Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta] (London: The Athlone Press, 1989).

110 show through their faces, because television uses many close-ups. And then you have the actors in films who have more freedom. They use not only their face, but also their body, like Faye and Maggie. The way they walk and the way they sit can tell a story better than 2 lines of dialogue!52

Importantly, Wong’s comments points to what he sees as a stylistic difference between television and the cinema, the use of the close-up, and the effect this can have on performance. This indicates his interest in the bodily aspects of performance over the focus on realistic emoting through the face. The blank, automatic qualities of performances in Wong’s films are similar to those of

~~Bresson’s ‘models’. 53 Wong’s instruction to ‘play themselves’ also recalls~~

~~Bresson’s distinction between the ‘being’ of ‘models’ as opposed to the~~

~~‘seeming’ of actors.54~~

Bresson achieved this blank quality by having performers enact everyday actions over and over. Doug Tomlinson links automatism, blankness and repetition in his explanation of Bresson asking his actors to perform simple tasks over and over again saying:

The desired effect is a level of automatism, of moving in a fashion in which there is no exteriorizing of emotion or psychology, no form of purposeful expression. The repetition of movement in rehearsal is meant to suppress intentionality and thus free authenticity. 55

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 52 Grosso, ‘In the Mood for Talk’ 81. 53 Bresson, Notes on Cinematography 1. 54 Bresson, Notes on Cinematography 1. 55 Doug Tomlinson, ‘Performance in the Films of Robert Bresson: The Aesthetics of Denial’ in Carole Zucker (Ed.), Making Visible the Invisible: An Anthology of Original Essays on Film Acting (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1990) 369-370.

111 Like Bresson, Wong gets his actors to perform simple everyday actions over and over to tire them out and break down their habit of trying to express everything through the face or as Tomlinson describes it: ‘exteriorizing of emotion or psychology [or] purposeful expression’.56 As in Bresson’s films, in

Wong’s work such emotional and psychological blankness disallows the conventional projection-identification relationship between characters and spectators. Instead the attention of the spectator is shifted to the enactment of actions and the surface of the performing body more broadly. This assessment of a blank performance mode in Wong’s work, along with Tomasulo’s identification of a ‘subtle gestural code’ reminiscent of Michelangelo Antonioni, can be understood by placing the director in a broader film tradition that puts emphasis on performance as a physical, bodily, material undertaking rather than

~~‘the actor hardly exist[ing] except as an agent of narrative’.57~~

This blank performance mode in both Bresson and Wong can be categorised as ‘extra daily’ in its focus on training the body of the actor through repetition.58 These ‘extra daily’ bodies perform quotidian actions over and over, defamiliarising the everyday. Stripped of intention, or the ‘externalising of emotion or psychology’, actions exist primarily as physical, material, rhythmic events.59 Lin’s drug smuggler in Chungking Express and Lai’s assassin in

~~Fallen Angels both deliver performances in which their faces are largely devoid of emotional expression and their actions have a vacant, automatic quality.~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 56 Tomlinson, ‘Performance in the Films of Robert Bresson’ 369-370. Such “flattening” of facial emotional expression can be found in both traditions of Chinese theatre and the work of several other modernist film directors. 57 Frank P. Tomasulo, ‘Eros and Civilization: Sexuality and Contemporary International Art Cinema’ Film International 6:6 (November, 2008) 32. James Naremore, Acting in the Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 2. 58 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. 59 Tomlinson, ‘Performance in the Films of Robert Bresson’ 369-370.

112 Leung Chiu-wai’s short performance at the end of Days of Being Wild, where he enacts a set of everyday bodily motions in a blank and automatic manner, is also representative of this quality. Several critics have mentioned Lai’s especially affectless performance in Fallen Angels with Chuck Stephens arguing that he

~~‘wanders through [the film] in a dullard’s daze’.60 Martha Nochimson describes the way Lai’s assassin performs his killings as ‘automatic’ and ‘mechanical’.61~~

However, in actual fact these qualities pervade all of the assassin’s actions creating an ‘extra daily’ performance of habitual action rather than externalisation of the character’s inner world.

A closer analysis of Lin’s performance in Chungking Express allows us to identify many of the key traits of this blank mode in Wong’s films. Lin’s blank performance mode is characterised by a distinct lack of interiority, failing to give a clear impression of her character’s thoughts and emotions. Lin maintains a largely expressionless face throughout. In the end, we know next to nothing about her. For instance, we are never given any indication of her character’s motivations for organising the smuggling of drugs, the central narrative action for her character. This lack of interiority is reinforced by her costume, which obscures her body. Lin wears a long beige raincoat, a wig and sunglasses for nearly the entire time we see her in the film. This allows us only a partial view of her performance.

~~Wong’s choice to conceal parts of Lin’s face is of particular importance.~~

~~Conventionally, the spectator comprehends the projection of thoughts and emotions of a character through the facial expressions of the actor, the eyes in~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 60 Chuck Stephens, ‘Time Pieces: Wong Kar-wai and the Persistence of Memory’ Film Comment 32:1 (January, 1996) 18. 61 Martha P. Nochimson, ‘Beautiful Resistance: The Early Films of Wong Kar-wai’ Cineaste 30:4 (Fall, 2005) 12.

113 particular. The large sunglasses worn by Lin compound the spectator’s inability to decipher her character’s thoughts and emotions. For instance, when Lin’s character meets Kaneshiro’s cop character in a bar we find it difficult to decipher her response to his advances due to her largely blank expression and the fact that her eyes are covered by a pair of dark sunglasses. Wong’s choice to have Lin’s character wear sunglasses suggests that he wanted to obstruct the spectator’s ability to read the character’s thoughts and emotions through the performer’s face. This matched with her blank delivery creates a distant, psychologically opaque character.

By looking at another performance in Fallen Angels, we will be able to see how modes of performance contrast sharply within this film as well as how different modes manifest some similar traits. Kaneshiro’s histrionic performance in Fallen Angels operates in stark contrast to Lai’s blank and automatic mode.

~~Whereas the latter is calm and inexpressive the former is energetic and animated.~~

While Kaneshiro is emotionally expressive however, his performance is often ostentatious to the point of parody. Since his character is mute, he expresses a lot through his face. Kaneshiro’s essentially histrionic performance, characterised by exaggerated facial expressions coupled with overblown physical actions, resembles a theatrical style of performance common in early slapstick comedies.

~~Instead of externalising readable and realistic internal thoughts or emotions,~~

~~Kaneshiro offers an outlandish, often confusing or ambiguous, surface.~~

For example, when He Zhiwu is pretending to be a butcher he play-acts that this is indeed his profession. In an ambiguous frontal shot he selects and cuts a piece of meat distorting his face uncharacteristically. The meaning of the shot remains uncertain as to whether or not it is filmed from the perspective of a

114 customer. Hence it comes across as some sort of vague direct address. In the same sequence He also tends to a dead pig as if he is a masseuse or chiropractor, rubbing its shoulders and pulling back its front legs. These over-the top actions and facial expressions do not give an insight into a realistic character but rather function on the level of surface, contributing to the sense of ambiguity and partiality of the character.

In another scene Kaneshiro’s character runs into Charlie after they have stopped seeing one another and enacts his own operatic demise. Using a frontal wide shot to frame the scene transforms the front of the fast food stand into a kind of proscenium arch. The wide shot captures the entire body of the performer and the whole scene unfolds in one continuous shot. He’s rapid movements stand out against Charlie’s stillness throughout. First, He playacts a gun battle, using a broom as a gun, when he is “shot”, significantly “through the heart”, he propels himself back against the glass display cabinet, grasping his chest and even squirting some tomato sauce on his chest for added effect. Charlie never really sees this display, as she is too busy keeping an eye out for the man coming to meet her, making it totally ineffectual. This scene centres on the enactment of a series of histrionic actions. Since the character to whom they are directed largely ignores these actions they become purposeless. This pointlessness puts emphasis on the physical effort of each movement, that is, the physicality of the performing body in motion.

From this analysis of Chungking Express and Fallen Angels we can see that modes of performance in Wong’s films shift between emotionally blank and theatrically expressive. While modes of performance differ across his body of work, there is a certain consistency of opacity in the expression of the character’s

115 thoughts or emotions. These characteristics link Wong’s approach to performance to the broader tradition of art-cinema, with which he shares the technique of characters lacking ‘clear-cut traits, motives and goals’.62 Like many art-cinema directors, Wong achieves a sense of ambiguity related to the inner workings of his characters. As in art-cinema, the absence of clear character goals also contributes to the loosening of cause and effect, creating gaps in linearity.

This opacity is complemented by an emphasis on the bodily aspects of performance. As Martin argues, Wong constructs recurring figures or types rather than individual characters.63 Their attributes do not serve the purpose of allowing insight into the private, individual psychological depths of the character; instead they come across as self-conscious projections of half-real persons or types. This self-conscious quality could be understood as coming from Wong’s unplanned style of shooting, where variations on actions, scenes, stories and characters are shot and reshot.

~~A scene in Fallen Angels involving “Blondie” (Karen Mok) and the assassin is indicative of this self-conscious quality. After picking him up in~~

McDonalds, Blondie brings the assassin back to her apartment building where she playfully lures him into her room. She gives him some dry clothes as it has been raining. The clothes fit him well and he asks who they belong to, a question she doesn’t answer. She is excitable, chattering on and unable to keep still. When he tries to kiss her she pushes him away and screams and laughs out the window.

Frustrated, he asks her what she wants. She tells him that they were together before, which he doesn’t seem to remember. Is it just that one has forgotten or the other is joking, or has Blondie mistaken this assassin for somebody else? It is !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 62 David Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ in Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985) 207. 63 Martin, ‘Perhaps’.

116 never clarified as to whether or not these two were lovers previously. This confusion, recalling Last Year at Marienbad (1961), is perhaps indicative of the influence of Alain Resnais on Wong’s style. Both characters could be seen to be

“trying out” their characters, Lai through an emotionally blank mode and Mok through an overtly histrionic, emotionally expressive mode. This leaves us with an ambiguous and incomplete sense of both the characters and their relationship, which again links Wong not only to Resnais but art-cinema style more broadly.64

~~Wong takes this self-conscious quality the furthest with In the Mood for~~

Love, inserting it into the text through a series of recreations and rehearsals between the two leads. In this film we can see how Wong’s approach to constructing performance seeps into the narrative of the film. The film’s main protagonists, Chow and So Lai-chen (Maggie Cheung), recreate scenarios of their respective partners getting together as well as rehearsing their own confrontation with their partners over their affair. In the recreation scenes the

Chow and Lai-chen characters play each other’s spouses, while in the rehearsals one of them plays themselves while the other plays their spouse.65 What is created here is an interesting performative scenario where the characters may be revealing their own feelings through the performance of another “character”.

However, there are also some ambiguous moments where we are left not knowing whether they are playing themselves or their partners. These moments of ambiguity create a vaguely self-reflexive mode of performance.

Rey Chow links these scenes of recreation and rehearsal in In the Mood for Love to the element of chance imbued in the relations between Wong’s !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 64 Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ and ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice’ in Poetics of Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2007) 151-169. 65 Wong originally planned to have Cheung and Leung Chiu-wai play all the characters in the film. See Kylie Boltin, ‘In the Mood for Love: A Meeting with Wong Kar-wai’’ Metro Magazine 129/130 (2000) 156.

117 characters.66 Chow argues that in this film the two leads ‘perpetuate the chance element of their encounter by recreating and rehearsing other people’s lives, assuming identities that are at once their own and not their own.’67 The element of chance springs from the feeling that the characters the performers play ‘could have been otherwise’.68 It is through this that the multiple possibilities of performance are drawn out. The scenes where characters move between playing themselves and playing other half-real characters sets up an openness, a fluidity of character itself. This openness fragments the “wholeness” or “realism” of character in Wong’s films, allowing them to float more freely. This feeling that they ‘could have [easily] been otherwise’ also pervades many other scenes in

~~Wong’s oeuvre, including the aforementioned scene between Lai and Mok in~~

~~Fallen Angels.69~~

The dominant modes of performance in Wong’s films tend to present us with only partial character types and direct the spectator’s attention to the surface of the performer’s body. Whether blank or overly expressive the performance always remains partial, incomplete, ghosted, fragmented. What is needed then is a way to theorise and understand these fragmented performances.

~~Lesionistic Filmic Bodies~~

~~Feral’s work on live performance offers a way of theorising the effect of~~

~~fragmentation on performing bodies.70 Her focus on the bodily aspects of~~

performance and the relationship between the performing body and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 66 Rey Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns: On the Uses of the Everyday in the Recent Films of Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-wai’ New Literary History 33:4 (Autumn, 2002) 645. 67 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 645. 68 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. 69 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. 70 Josette Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality: The Subject Demystified’ [Translated by Terese Lyons] Modern Drama 25:1 (Spring, 1982) 170-181.

~~118 fragmentation make her ideas apt for the claims this thesis makes about Wong’s~~

~~filmic bodies. Feral argues that performance:~~

is based on an extensive, conscious practice, deliberately consented to: the experience of the body wounded, dismembered, mutilated, and cut up (if only by a movie camera…), a body belonging to a fully accepted lesionism…cut up not in order to negate it, but in order to bring it back to life in each of its parts which have, each one, become an independent whole…Instead of atrophying, the body is therefore enriched by all the part-objects that make it up and whose richness the subject learns to discover in the course of the performance.71

Feral’s definition of performance describes the fragmentary effect of the cinematic apparatus very well. Lesionism is defined by Feral as ‘a practice whereby the body is represented not as an entity or a united whole, but as divided into parts or fragments’.72 For Feral, performance is a process of drawing attention to different parts of the body. In a live performance context this means isolating aspects of the body turning them into part-objects in the process of performance. She argues that by cutting the body up in this manner each part operates as an independent entity that then enlivens the performance as a whole.

While Feral argues that ‘[t]hese part-objects are privileged, isolated, and magnified by the performer’, the cinematic apparatus can also be seen to enact this privileging, isolating and magnifying. 73

Sophie Wise employs Feral’s theory of lesionism in her analysis of performance in the films of Hal Hartley.74 As comments by several critics including Lalanne, Rohdie and Abbas and the analysis already undertaken here !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 172. 72 Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 180. 73 Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 172. 74 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’.

119 indicates, Wong produces a strong sense of fragmentation in his films. Drawing from Wise, this thesis understands the filmic body as one ‘belonging to a fully accepted lesionism’ practised by the film medium itself, as an idea that aligns closely with Wong’s construction of filmic bodies.75 Unlike classical narrative style, he embraces the lesionistic drive of the film medium. Wong’s

~~“acceptance” of lesionism manifests in many ways through performance modes, framing and editing as well as other stylistic elements.~~

Wise’s contention that a sense of limitlessness can come about via the fragmentation of the performing body is equally important for the argument being made here about Wong’s incomplete and resonant filmic bodies.76 Wise argues that through fragmentation filmic bodies can ‘suggest their own limitlessness’.77 This sense of limitlessness refers to the potential of performing bodies to be endlessly divided into pieces. It relies on the presentation of the performing body as a series of part-objects that never make a whole and hence, it is argued, creates a sense of limitless variation. This recalls Lalanne’s argument that Wong’s ‘aesthetic project is based on the openness of the work’. 78 Just as according to Lalanne ‘[e]ach film [in Wong’s oeuvre] is to be seen as a fragment’ so too are his filmic bodies to be seen as partial and open-ended, entities that are open to endless revision. 79 The violent form of lesionism that characterises his filmic bodies is as much dependent on a range of cinematic choices as performing bodies themselves. In order to establish this we need to turn to the close analysis of specific scenes and moments.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 75 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’ 248 and Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 172. 76 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’ 250. 77 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’ 250. 78 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 9. 79 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 9.

120 A “lesionistic” understanding of film performance can be brought to the analysis of countless moments of performance in Wong’s films, including the sequence that opens this chapter. As is described, the sequence at the beginning of Fallen Angels depicts two performers, Reis and Lai, approaching the same location in a similar way, similar both in terms of the route, bodily actions and shot setups. Cinematically this sequence breaks the performing body up into ‘bits and pieces’, fragmenting it to a considerable degree.80 A number of stylistic elements construct these filmic bodies as incomplete: a jerky hand-held camera, constantly shifting angles, abrupt, sometimes discontinuous, edits, close-ups and mid shots of parts of the body and performers moving behind scenery and out of frame. There is a strong feeling of repetition in the sequence that is enacted through a combination of the cinematic apparatus and bodily performance. This repetition disrupts the linearity usually associated with cinematic storytelling.

~~This sequence crystallises how performance works with other elements of film style (in this case shot size, framing, camera movement, and editing) to operate as lesionistic entities.~~

~~Another such moment in Fallen Angels is when the agent and the~~

~~assassin are once again shown visiting the same locale via a series of similar~~

~~shot setups and actions. In the sequence the performers are shown in brief,~~

~~mostly medium close-up shots as they move through a barbershop in slow~~

~~motion. Most of these shots are medium close-ups of the two actors either front~~

~~on as they walk towards the camera or over the shoulder as they walk through~~

~~the shop and past the people populating it. Wong repeats whole shot setups~~

~~featuring very similar actions by the performers such as an over the shoulder~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 80 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 9.~~

121 shot from behind each performer as they walk through the shop. Though it eventually becomes apparent that they visited at different times, in this sequence their separate visits are cut together giving the impression, at first, that they are there at the same time.

The sequence is very disorientating. Upon close observation one set of shots even appears to be out of chronological order. For example, the final shot of the agent depicts her walking in the door and her shots seem to move in reverse order so that she leaves before she arrives. So, while shots of the assassin show him making his way through the barbershop in chronological order, shots of the agent are placed in a kind of reverse order but not exactly.

This editing strategy is combined with the almost constant movement of the hand-held camera, which follows the characters casually walking through the space and cuts between the two performers, creating the spatial and temporal disorientation Wong is well-known for. There is even a kind of false eyeline match where the assassin glances off screen and the shot that follows could be the agent’s viewpoint. However, instead of depicting the agent looking offscreen, the next shot shows Reis walking in the opposite direction, creating confusion as to the connection between the shots. Though the shots are spatially and temporally disjointed, for most of the sequence the shots connect with each other via a consistent rhythm of bodily action and camera movement across edits.

By repeating shot setups and having each performer enact similar movements, keeping the performers and camera constantly moving and connecting the images using fast-paced, non-linear editing, Wong gives only a partial view of the space and the performer’s bodies. In this way each action

~~122 builds upon one another, each incomplete, each already started or cut short, not~~

~~flowing continuously but disjointed. As in Feral’s understanding of~~

~~performance, the breaking up of performing bodies into part objects lends each~~

~~gestural fragment its own vitality and openness or is ‘brought back to life’.81~~

~~The enlivening effect described by Feral refers to the way that fragmentation~~

~~can produce an emphasis on the material, lively properties of the body in~~

~~performance or in this case the filmic body. The spectator is then invited to~~

~~engage bodily with filmic bodies through a process of connecting fragmented~~

~~cinematic gestures.~~

The last scene in Days of Being Wild featuring Leung Chiu-wai is a crucial example of Wong’s lesionistic approach to film performance. Though this is the only example in his oeuvre where he includes a scene unrelated to the rest of the film, it is symptomatic of his broader lesionistic or fragmentary approach to creating filmic bodies and the way spectators are encouraged to engage with them. A lack of any information on a character’s history or motivation is a common trait of many of Wong’s characters. However, here it is taken to its furthest extreme, as it is the only scene this character has in the film.82 There is no information given on the characters’ history, motivations or role in the overall narrative. Since the scene and character have no narrative connection to the rest of the film and no information about the character is given, this figure is only ever offered incompletely to the spectator. As happens many times in Wong’s films, this lack of information prompts spectators to focus their attention on the surface of the performing body and on the enactment of a set of everyday gestures performed automatically as Leung Chu-wai readies himself !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 81 Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 172. 82 The scene was shot for a sequel to Days of Being Wild that was subsequently cancelled when the film did not do well at the box office.

123 for a night out. Each gesture operates primarily as the magnified performance of a physical action. Just as Wise argues of Hartley, the partiality of the performance ‘aggrandise[s]’ each movement for the spectator ‘suggesting their own limitlessness’, that is their ability to be endlessly reworked and evoked at different times and places.83

~~Wong’s way of putting together a film; writing bits of script at the last~~

~~minute, giving little indication to his actors about character, story or how he sees~~

~~the end result and having performers repeat gestures and scenes, augments the~~

~~film medium’s innate lesionism and hence fosters the sense of limitlessness it~~

~~can create. A lesionistic understanding of performance is useful in analysing~~

~~how fragmentation affects performing bodies in Wong’s cinema. The ‘bringing~~

~~back to life’ that Feral attributes to this mode of performance can be read as a~~

~~kind of affective force for both the performer and the spectator. As Feral notes~~

~~‘it attempts to wake the body – the performer’s and the spectator’s – from the~~

~~threatening anaesthesia haunting it.’ 84 The filmic body in Wong could be~~

~~fruitfully conceived as a performing body ‘brought back to life’ as a material,~~

~~affective object for the spectator through fragmentation. However, in order to~~

~~fully understand the effect of fragmentation on his filmic bodies and more~~

~~specifically how spectators may engage with them, a deeper understanding of~~

~~the filmic nature of these fragmented bodies is required. Like Wise, this thesis~~

~~posits the spectator as active. However, this thesis is focused on a material,~~

~~tactile mode of engagement with the medium itself and hence seeks to bring~~

~~these ideas together with more cinematic theories.~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 83 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’ 250. 84 Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 174.~~

~~124 Haptic Cinema: “thinness” and tactility~~

Laura Marks’ theorisation of haptic cinema can assist in developing an understanding of how spectators may engage bodily with Wong’s lesionistic filmic bodies.85 Indeed, Marks offers some very useful ideas for understanding the ways the fragmented movement of ‘human [performing] bodies within the cinematic frame…may move viewers’, that is, for understanding the affective potential of film performance more broadly. 86 Like Feral, Marks theorises the affective potential of the partial, incomplete or as this thesis would have it, fragmentary. Marks categorises film (and video) images that appear incomplete or obscured as haptic and argues that these images invite the viewer to participate more intimately with them. Marks contends that ‘a haptic work may recreate an image in detail [and] that it evades a distanced view, instead pulling the viewer in close…the viewer perceives the texture as much as the objects imaged.’87 She argues that ‘[t]he haptic image forces the viewer to contemplate the image itself instead of being pulled into narrative’.88 Drawing from Deleuze,

Marks explains that ‘[h]aptic cinema does not invite identification with a figure – a sensory-motor reaction – so much as it encourages a bodily relationship between viewer and image.’89 The idea of the haptic then suggests a way to understand how the partial film image encourages a bodily mode of engagement with the surface of the film image. This is very important for the understanding of performance in Wong’s films being proposed in this thesis.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 85 Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). 86 Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 9. 87 Marks, The Skin of the Film 163. 88 Marks, The Skin of the Film 163. 89 Marks, The Skin of the Film 164.

125 Marks’ notion of haptic cinema recalls both Walter Benjamin’s notion of the ‘optical unconscious’ and Siegfried Kracauer’s idea of the ‘material dimension’, both of which according to Miriam Hansen refer to the way film is able to engage spectators on the level of the body through a tactile mode of vision.90 Hansen’s close readings of the development of the ideas of these two theorists reinforces Marks’ understanding of the materiality of both the spectator’s eye and the film medium that is integral to the concept of haptic cinema. According to Hansen’s reading, the optical unconscious describes a material way of knowing the world. Benjamin’s concept describes how the medium of film is able to bring to our attention aspects of the material world that elude consciousness and that such aspects connect directly with the film spectators’ ‘sensory-somatic’ being.91 Kracauer’s idea of the material dimension is similar to the optical unconscious in that, as Hansen points out, it conceives of the potential for cinema to engage spectators via ‘sensual, bodily perception’.92

~~Like Marks’ haptic cinema, Benjamin and Kracauer’s ideas describe the film medium and a mode of film spectatorship that is tactile, sensual, material.~~

In his famous “artwork” essay Benjamin argues that the film medium alters objects, including actors, allowing spectators to see them in ways they have never been seen before.93 Discussing how cinema transforms objects and people Benjamin asserts:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 90 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ Hannah Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1968) 236-237 and Miriam Hansen, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: “The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology”’ New German Critique 40 (Winter, 1987) 179-224, ‘Benjamin and Cinema: Not a One-Way Street’ Critical Inquiry 25:2 (Winter, 1999) 306-343, ‘“With Skin and Hair”: Kracauer’s Theory of Film, Marseille 1940’ Critical Inquiry 19:3 (Spring, 1993) 437-469, and ‘Introduction’ in Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) vii- xlv. 91 Hansen, ‘Not a One-Way Street’ 341. 92 Hansen, ‘Introduction’ vii-xlv. 93 Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art’ 236-237.

~~126~~

With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlargement of a snap-shot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject. So, too, slow motion not only presents familiar qualities of movement but reveals in them entirely unknown ones…the camera intervenes with the resources of its lowerings and liftings, its interruptions and isolations, its extensions and accelerations, its enlargements and reductions. The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.94

As Benjamin contends, the transformative and revelatory powers of the film medium come to bear on objects, including performing bodies. As Hansen argues, Benjamin’s earlier conception of the optical unconscious takes into account the role of the spectator in ways that include their direct, material engagements with film images.95 Marks’ ‘haptic cinema’ is in fact very close to this notion of the ‘optical unconscious’. Like Benjamin, Marks articulates the way film images are able to capture the materiality of objects and through this to engage the spectator in a material, bodily way via fragmenting close-ups.

Like Benjamin’s notion of the optical unconscious, Marks argues that the partial or incomplete images that characterise haptic cinema appeal more readily to this tactile mode of viewing. The ‘contemplation of the image’ that she describes refers to sight as a sensual process of brushing over the image’s surface. This is a practice of surveying an image’s textures, a touching of the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 94 Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art’ 236-237. 95 Hansen, ‘Not a One-Way Street’: ‘For the optical unconscious, as the medium of a transformed mimetic capacity, to become effective as/in collective innervation, the level of inscription would have to be hinged into that of reception, that is, the psychoanalytically inflected temporality of the former would have to mesh with the collective subjectivity of the latter. Only then would the technically enabled extension and decentering of the sensorium (at the level of the filmic text) translate into an imaginative, empowering incorporation of the apparatus on the part of the audience’ (340).

127 image with one’s eyes, sight as a process of feeling surfaces through the material process of vision. The kinds of “thin” images Marks places under the umbrella of haptic include close-ups that abstract their objects or focus attention on their textures as well as indistinct, blurry and damaged or degraded images.

Benjamin’s conception of the way film is able to engage spectators in an immediate, bodily way by abstracting material objects (including the actor’s body) articulates a sense of disruption in these moments. Like Benjamin, Marks argues that because these kinds of images disrupt the spectator’s attempts to read them representationally they instead encourage this more “intimate” bodily engagement with the material surface of the image.

Though Marks takes largely non-narrative experimental film and video practice as her objects of analysis, aspects of her theories may be transposed to the study of narrative cinema. In order to bring Marks’ ideas about haptic cinema to an analysis of Wong’s filmic bodies, her definition of “thinness” needs to be extended to include the kind of cut up, escaping, just missed, incomplete, obscured, or broadly fragmented, images of performance that characterise his work.96 Just as in Marks’ definition of haptic images, the kinds of blurry, distorted, fractured and otherwise partial filmic bodies we find in Wong’s films prompt a kind of tactile relation to the image. Abbas’ description of Wong’s images as disappearing and visually ambiguous is indeed very close to Marks’ description of haptic images. Beyond the heavy use of close-ups and blurry images that mark Wong’s film style as haptic, there are a plethora of other elements of film style that work to create his tactile filmic bodies.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 96 Marks, The Skin of the Film 163.~~

~~128 Haptic Style~~

There are several stylistic choices related to Wong’s use of the film medium that make up his tactile filmic bodies. Staging and framing, shot size, lens choice, film speed and editing are all used in his films to construct haptic images of performance. These choices could be defined broadly as ‘inflation’ as they call attention to the medium itself.97 These elements work in concert with one another and with performances that are opaque and focused strongly on the physicality of bodies.

Framing in Wong’s films tends to obscure the performer either by leaving an important part of their body out of the frame or together with staging, allows bits of mise-en-scene to obstruct the camera’s view of the performance. By doing this, Wong sets up partitions between performer and camera, and hence between performer and spectator, embracing the lesionistic inclination of the film medium and as such deliberately constructing the filmic body as partial, incomplete or haptic. In Chungking Express and Fallen Angels the performers are repeatedly shot through glass windows, often with rainwater trickling down them offering us only a partial or obscured view of the performance. This is indicative of

~~Wong’s equal treatment of all objects in the frame, including the performer.~~

~~A powerful example of the effect of this obscured view occurs in Fallen~~

Angels when He Zhiwu and Charlie are sitting at the window of a restaurant with rain pouring down the glass pane. The camera is placed outside so that the rainy window stands between the camera and the performers. The effect is to blur the image of the two with the window mediating how the performing body may be viewed. The blurring effect is intensified by the use of step-printing, which

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 97 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’ and ‘“Paths That Wind through the Thicket of Things” (Things in the Cinema)’ Critical Inquiry 28:1 (Autumn, 2001) 324-326.

129 creates a jittery stop-start effect where the image appears to alternately freeze and skip forward. The surface of the image becomes watery, hazy and highly tactile for the viewer. There is a strong sense of enmeshment of performers and film medium; it is not a matter of recording a set of actions so much as creating skittish, tactile filmic actions.

~~Charlie sits still with her head resting on her right hand, He Zhiwu~~

“mirrors” Charlie’s posture, resting his head on his left hand he slowly drinks from a glass of water with his right. As he does this He’s voice over narration explains this was the night he fell in love for the first time. After this voice over narration there is an extended moment in which He simply enacts a similar set of actions twice over. He enacts all his movements slowly and in the background we comprehend the blurred hustle and bustle of people in and out of the eatery.

Leaning over towards Charlie He brings his head close to Charlie’s hair moving his nose upward, seemingly smelling it. Moving his head back, He slowly raises his right hand and hovers it over her head and back, caressing without touching her body. He then enacts these gestures in reverse. Stroking her at a distance once again He then smells her hair once more and returns to his original

~~“mirroring” pose, resting his head on his hand.~~

In the scene, as happens throughout Wong’s oeuvre, the performance and the cinematic apparatus both operate powerfully on the level of surface, the images are blurry and textured and the performer enacts a series of histrionic actions twice over that have seemingly no purpose. As with many other scenes in his films, Wong creates a moment of narrative disruption and pushes the spectator’s attention on to the surface of the filmic body as a partial, tactile, haptic filmic object.

130 Unconventional use of shot size is the other component to Wong’s fragmentary framing. His films feature heavy use of mid, medium close-up and close-up shots of performer’s bodies, but they often do not have a clear narrative function. Rather than using these shots to highlight pieces of narrative or character information, Wong often presents the spectator with parts of the body of the performer (for instance, the hands or the torso) isolating and enlarging them in such a way as to allow us to engage with them as sensuous objects.

In a classical narrative construction of performance, shot size is typically varied to present elements of the performance pertinent to convey information about narrative and character. For instance, classical narrative films tend to use close-ups of performers’ faces for the purpose of focusing the spectator’s attention on and allowing a close view of characters’ thoughts and emotions expressed or projected by the performer through facial cues and dialogue. This long-standing convention can be traced back to the work of “the father of classical film narration” D.W. Griffith. In the 1910s Griffith pioneered this and many other techniques in order to convey the inner psychology of characters.

Béla Balázs is a key theorist on the use of the close-up in cinema. Balázs articulates how in narrative cinema close-ups of an actor’s face usually function to enable spectators to get close enough to understand the character’s thoughts or emotions being expressed.98 As Balázs explains, in this use of the close-up an actor’s face is separated from their surroundings in order to bring the spectator into close proximity with every nuance of the emotions and thoughts of a character expressed on the actor’s face. Not only is this mode of unambiguous

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 98 Béla Balázs, ‘The Face of Man’ in Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art (New York: Dover Publications, 1970) 60-88.~~

~~131 expression rare in Wong’s films, but also in general he uses close-ups in a more ambiguous, tactile way.~~

As Wong’s films demonstrate, the effect of breaking performing bodies into pieces in this way can, as Feral suggests, transform the body into a series of part-objects.99 As Wise contends, this encourages a spectator to actively engage in the construction of the filmic body from a number of partial elements.100

~~Drawing on Marks we can further understand this engagement as a tactile and bodily engagement with partial filmic bodies.~~

This tactile use of closer shots is intensified in Fallen Angels by the use of a wide-angle lens. Fallen Angels opens with a two-shot of the agent and the assassin. Reis is placed close to the camera, which picks up and enlarges even her slightest movement with the aid of the wide-angle lens. Though the characters sit stationary, Reis’ slightly nervous manner, her closeness to the camera, which is also slightly shaky, and the smoke being emitted from her mouth and cigarette (which also jitters in her hand) create an agitated effect within the image. Indeed, the freewheeling nature of the camera work matches perfectly the unsettled disposition of the performing bodies; neither can ever keep still, each amplifying the other.

Cinematic special effects that distort the performing body are central to the way Wong constructs his filmic bodies. As his unconventional use of the wide-angle lens in Fallen Angels indicates, visual effects that call attention to the film medium and the materiality of performing bodies mark Wong’s films.

~~Manipulation of film speed is also an important tool used by the director to draw out performing bodies in ways that abstract and distort movement.~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 99 Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’. 100 Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley’.~~

132 Wong makes use of regular and step-printed slow motion to cinematically abstract and distort performing bodies. Rey Chow articulates very well the effect that slow motion has on how we experience the movements of performing bodies in Wong’s cinema.101 Chow’s description of how slow motion transforms and abstracts bodily actions, drawing out their very texture or materiality in In the

Mood for Love, recalls Benjamin’s understanding of the effect of the filmic apparatus on performing bodies. Importantly, Chow argues it is through a combination of ‘repetitive’ or ‘habitual’ gestures and slow motion that Wong directs the spectator’s attention back onto the texture of the film medium itself, or more precisely the filmic body.102 Here again we can see how through particular combinations of performative and cinematic techniques Wong is able to create filmic bodies that have haptic, affective qualities.

Slow motion draws attention to the physicality of each movement in the sequence in the barbershop in Fallen Angels, described earlier for its lesionistic approach to editing. Just as Chow explains in his analysis of In the Mood for

Love, in this scene in Fallen Angels slow motion draws out the everyday motions of strolling through the barbershop giving them an added material weight. This is complemented by the performers’ blank expressions, coupled with close shots and is augmented further by the repetition of very similar actions by the two performers.

~~While Wong uses slow motion throughout his oeuvre, it is In the Mood for~~

~~Love that contains many of the most affecting examples of its use in constructing filmic bodies, as in the moment at the mah-jong table described by Chow.103~~

Other forceful examples include Lai-chen’s visits to the noodle stand. The two !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 101 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 647. Emphasis mine. 102 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 647. 103 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 647.

~~133 instances of Lai-chen walking to the noodle stand are very similar in terms of~~

Cheung’s bodily movements, framing, camera movement, film speed and editing. The first instance of the scene begins with a slightly obtuse, slightly low angled hip height medium close shot of her lower torso, legs and hands. A noodle thermos is swinging in one hand and her purse is clutched in the other as she walks in a purposeful manner down a dark street. The camera tracks to the right as she effortlessly descends a dark set of stairs. In each of these scenes, slow motion is used to highlight the physicality or material texture of these simple, everyday movements. It also gives them a floating, graceful quality.

Slow motion extends and abstracts the habitual movement of walking down the street and descending a set of stairs making it tactile, haptic. Framing that draws attention to part of the performer’s body complements the use of slow motion, intensifying the sense of partiality and abstraction.

Step-printed slow motion is one of Wong’s “signature” stylistic devices and a powerfully fragmentary element of his films. As with his use of regular slow motion, with step-printing, he abstracts and distorts the performer’s body.

Step-printing is achieved by shooting at around six frames per second and then printing selected frames a few times over to bring it up to twenty-four frames per second. The result is a stop-start effect that alternately skips and pauses. Wong makes heavy use of this technique in Ashes of Time (1994) turning battle scenes into what Abbas describes as ‘a kind of Abstract Expressionism or Action

~~Painting’.104 Wong also uses it to great effect in Fallen Angels and Chungking~~

~~Express.~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 104 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 60.~~

134 As was noted before, Wong uses step-printing in Fallen Angels in a scene involving He and Charlie sitting in a restaurant. Wong places a rainy window between the camera and the performers and step-prints the scene creating a hazy, smudged effect. This image is highly tactile, largely due to its distorted, partial nature brought about by step-printing the scene. Step-printing abstracts the scene so that our engagement with it is on the level of the surface, that is the partial material, hence haptic, qualities of the film image itself. The jittery, slowed down gestures of the filmic bodies are a highly textured surface for the spectator’s eye. This demonstrates once again how partiality and affectivity are linked in our experience of Wong’s filmic bodies.

~~Step-printing is also used to great effect throughout Chungking Express.~~

Near the end of the film Wong uses step-printing in a shot featuring Leung Chiu- wai inserting a coin into a jukebox while waiting for Faye at a bar. Leung Chiu- wai moves very slowly in the foreground while people move past him in the background in a blur. Tong rightly identifies the effect of step-printing as a temporal fracture.105 Temporal fragmentation is an essential element of Wong’s filmic bodies and as such will be analysed in detail in the next chapter. In the opening moments of Chungking Express featuring Lin discussed earlier in this chapter, step-printing augments the restless camera and constant movement of the performer, which lends a blurry texture and jitter to the images. The sense of fracture caused by the movement of camera, performer and the effect of step- printing is also amplified by the use of non-linear editing.

~~Editing is a very important tool of cinematic fragmentation used by~~

~~Wong in the construction of filmic bodies, disrupting the linear flow and~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 105 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51.~~

135 contributing to the sense that they are never quite complete. This can be seen in the opening scenes of Chungking Express and the sequence from Fallen Angels described earlier where Reis and Lai both visit the assassin’s apartment one after the other. This kind of editing has the effect of cutting short, disconnecting or separating gestures from one another. Like framing, shot sizes, distorting lenses, and film speed, these edits produce a sense of incompleteness.

~~For instance, in the scene described at the start of this chapter a shot of~~

Reis’ hand reaching through a broken window is followed by a match shot of the hand inside. However, what follows this shot is not a shot of her removing her hand but a shot of Reis spinning the keys round her finger. This only very slight jump in time causes a sense of discontinuity between actions. Wong does this again with the next two shots. In a mid shot from inside we see Reis’ shadow heading toward the door. There is an edit and the next shot is a medium close-up of her hands unlocking the door. Again there is a slight discontinuity here. By disrupting the linear flow, Wong draws attention to the medium itself and the spectator’s attention is once again brought back to the material experience of film spectatorship. Jolted out of a linear flow, these disjointed gestures are instead able to form other, for example material and rhythmic, connections with one another. The spectator is invited to connect these disjointed images. In a similar way to the blurry, degraded, haptic images that pervade Wong’s cinema, each disjointed image exists as a material entity that encourages the spectator to participate bodily in deciphering it.

~~136 Wong’s Haptic Filmic Bodies~~

While it could definitely be argued that Wong’s images have a partial quality, this incompleteness encourages the spectator to contemplate filmic bodies in a slightly different way to the purely tactile sensation of being “lost in the image” that Marks suggests for experimental film and video. Wong’s cinema moves between narrative and tactile concerns, at times creating a kind of haptic narrative. In his films we encounter an emphasis on the surface of things and bodies, on the affective textures of the image coupled with narrative intention, creating a kind of disrupted, halting, haptic, tactile or affective narrative. To this end Stephen Teo makes some insightful comments about Ashes of Time, stating:

Textures abound and recur in this film, not only in the clothes, baskets, lanterns and hats, umbrellas and slippers but also in the water, earth, sky – textures created by ripples on the water, desert scrubs, craggy cliffs, cloud formations. Everything in this film is an opportunity to use textures, at every turn our tactile senses are aroused: from the dark, glossy smoothness of a horse’s skin to the rough wrinkles on the tree bark. Indeed, there are scenes of hands stroking, squeezing and rubbing that have less to do with the narrative and are more concerned with the tactile sensation that the director wants us to feel, a desire that he takes to the extreme, as in the scene where Peach Blossom embraces her horse, and also in the episode where Brigitte Lin’s Murong Yin embraces the twisted and gnarled trunk of a tree as if mating with it. Like a tactile artist, Wong weaves together the pieces of his narrative with the use of textures.106

Teo’s description recalls Marks’ definition of haptic cinema in its concern with the tactility of film images. Indeed, the fragmented body of the performer is a very important textured thing we find in Wong’s films. Just as ‘ripples on water, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 106 Stephen Teo, Wong Kar-wai (London: British Film Institute, 2005) 79.

~~137 desert scrubs, craggy cliffs, cloud formations’ become sites of tactile engagement so too do performing bodies.107~~

~~Fallen Angels contains a scene that bears a striking similarity to the scene in Ashes of Time between Carina Lau and her horse that Teo finds so affecting.~~

The scene demonstrates very well how performance in Wong’s films could be considered haptic, that is, concerned with a tactile, affective form of engagement achieved through fragmentation. The scene is made up of a series of close-up shots of the agent (Reis) caressing and moving up against a jukebox, with shots of her hands, legs, torso and face, held and repeated. The exclusive use of close- ups of the jukebox and Reis’s head, torso, hand and legs create a powerfully sensuous scene. As in the examples of repetition already discussed, many of the shots are repeated and varied – her hand resting on top of the jukebox holding a burning cigarette, her affectless face partially and at times totally covered by her hair, her body leaning close to the jukebox.

Throughout the scene the camera never stops moving, capturing the performer while moving away from her. It surveys portions of her body while she subtly sways. Here we can see evidence of Doyle’s particular talent for

‘danc[ing] with the camera’.108 The camera slides up and down, left and right, moving past her. Wong edits between shots of different parts of her body as she hangs over the jukebox, swaying to the music. Brief one to three second shots are followed by lingering twenty to twenty-five second shots that glide over

Reis’ body at close range creating an alternating fast-slow rhythm. The shiny, slinky, silver dress she wears is made highly tactile through the use of close-up, the warm yellow and red light coming from the juke-box, and Reis’ subtle !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 107 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 79. 108 Patricia Thomson, ‘Production Slate: A Jazz Session with Fallen Angels’ American Cinematographer 79:2 (February, 1998) 16.

~~138 rhythmic swaying. Wong uses a mirror to create a confusion of the 180 degree rule here, cutting between shots with the cigarette in her right hand, then her left.~~

~~The flowing movements of the camera match the illuminated liquid flowing through the visible “veins” of the jukebox.~~

The details of Reis’ body and the jukebox are “forced” upon the spectator through a series of close, ‘haptic’ shots that are at times hard to decipher. This directs the spectator’s focus toward the surface of the tactile, haptic filmic body.

This sequence, like the one from Ashes of Time, is meant to be erotic to be sure, but beyond this it also tells us something about Wong’s particular use of bodies and objects: that they are all equal in terms of their tactile potential. As in Teo’s description of Ashes of Time, the body of the performer is treated as equal to every other object, exploited for its tactile, cinematic appeal. The camera movements, the close range of the shots, Reis’ bodily movements, and the editing in this scene all work together to create a floating disorientation.

Though this example and Teo’s one from Ashes of Time occur in vastly different contexts there is something that connects them for the spectator and that is a tactile, affective way of viewing the lesionistic or haptic filmic body.

~~Importantly this connection is based on a ‘collision’ of elements of film style.~~

Both scenes are made up of a series of repeated close-ups of the body moving and caressing suggestively. Furthermore, as in the Ashes of Time scene, Reis’ face is half obscured by her hair. Even here then repetition of combinations of shots, edits and bodily movements can cause subtle fractures in the image by referring back to previous actions.

~~Tong’s observations on Wong’s fractured images created through the repetition of everyday gestures are indicative of this. The fracture described by~~

139 Tong could in fact be understood via the notion of haptic images. These ghosted or fractured images generate a form of indistinctness and encourage spectators to become involved in the image via an active process of making material connections between past and present gestures that seem to coexist in these incomplete and indistinct filmic bodies.

Classifying Wong’s cinema as, at least sometimes, “haptic” suggests a way to understand how the lesionistic qualities of performance may engage spectators materially as film images. However as the above example shows, it is more than close-ups or use of blur that makes Wong’s filmic bodies haptic. The haptic or tactile quality of Wong’s filmic bodies is dependent on many different elements operating together in different configurations. These include bodily modes of performance, obstruction caused by framing and staging, an emphasis on close shots that highlight the sensual and material, blur and film speed that creates highly textured film surfaces and editing that sets actions apart and draws the spectator’s attention to the medium. All these elements are integral in the construction of haptic filmic bodies in Wong’s cinema. As both Feral’s and

~~Marks’ ideas suggest, the process of breaking the performing body into segments and presenting it only ever partially encourages a mode of spectatorship that is active, material and bodily.~~

~~Conclusions~~

Fragmentation represents a vital overarching aesthetic trait of Wong’s filmic bodies. By attending to the different manifestations of this trait and seeking a way to understand how it shapes the way spectators may engage with the human bodies in the frame both Wong’s films and performance on film in general can

140 be better understood. Cinema is a necessarily ‘lesionistic’ apparatus. It transforms performing bodies into part-objects. Depending on a range of cinematic choices, filmic bodies can be more or less lesionistic. By accepting rather than attempting to conceal the propensity of the film medium to break things into pieces and offering them always as something incomplete, Wong manages to suggest a sense of limitlessness. This limitlessness is based on openness and the idea of endless variation and revision that is brought about by things never being complete, whole or finished. By revisiting performers, character types, stories, scenes, shot setups and actions, Wong sets up the possibility for spectators to make connections between all these part-objects.

Through modes of performance and the use of the film medium working in concert he creates highly tactile and sensual filmic bodies. The focus on the incomplete, blurry, abstract and distorted images of opaque, bodily performance encourages the spectator to participate in apprehending his filmic bodies.

~~Wong’s filmic bodies are not complete but are open to constant reforming through their connections to each other. These connections can be tactile, material, and bodily.~~

The sequence that opens this chapter contains many of the essential elements of Wong’s fragmented filmic bodies. Both performers enact a similar series of actions in an affectless, automatic fashion encouraging a focus on the surface, the physicality of the body. The performers are shot with tight framing that puts emphasis on the texture or materiality of each action; each action is a material event. In having the second performer repeat a similar set of actions in similar shot setups, actions produce a sense of resonance or fracture with ones that have come before. In both instances as they reach their hand through the

141 window for the key there is a cut to a match shot of the hand taking the key off the hook from inside the apartment. However, Wong offers a slight variation in the next shot as in the first instance she swings the key around her finger and in the second he turns it in his fingers readying it to be put into the lock. He does this again in the next two shots. In the first instance there is a cut to a medium shot from inside as the agent’s silhouette passes quickly by the window then another cut to a close shot of her hands unlocking the door then a cut to her closing the door from inside. In the second instance, the shot of the assassin twisting the key in his hands is not followed by a cut but a move of the camera that follows his hands to the door where he unlocks it. When the agent is about to leave the apartment, she closes the window. Shortly after the assassin enters the apartment he opens the window in the exact same shot setup (from outside the apartment looking in), creating an echo and a reversal of the action.

Wong even repeats some of the same shot setups with the only difference being the performer. Though both Reis and Lai perform the same gestures, each does so differently. The similar way that the performer’s movements are cut up and recomposed produces a feeling of repetition and variation. In this instance it is an emotionally blank, automatic mode of performance that directs the focus to the surface of the performer’s body. The emphasis given to each action through tight framing, fast cutting and their enactment multiple times encourages a sense of fracture or resonance for the spectator. The performing body is obscured, escaping, always disappearing behind scenery and out of the frame and actions are disjointed by editing. It is both through its initial partiality and repetition that this resonance occurs. All the incomplete parts possess an open quality so that they are able to connect with and build upon one another.

142 This account of Wong’s filmic bodies contradicts Naremore’s claim that in film performance ‘the actor hardly exists except as an agent of narrative’ and that ‘films depend on a form of communication whereby meanings are acted out.’109 The director’s filmic bodies evidence cinema’s continuing fascination with capturing and reconfiguring the human body in movement and the non- representational drive of his approach to film performance. His filmic bodies are made up of partial bodily actions, repeated and varied. This is not a flowing continuation of movement so much as a layering of disjointed, sometimes contrary, actions. Wong’s cinema appeals to a mode of spectatorship that is active, bodily and personal. The spectator is invited to engage with filmic bodies as disparate part-objects where things occur and recur in pieces. As has already been suggested, Wong’s approach to temporality and rhythm form a vital facet of his approach to constructing fragmentary, tactile filmic bodies. The juxtaposition of divergent rhythms forms an important aspect of Wong’s fragmentary style and so warrants close attention. The next chapter examines how temporal fracturing of Wong’s filmic bodies contributes to their tactility. It does this through a focus on the violent shifting between movement and stasis, discussing the most potent example of this tendency, Ashes of Time.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 109 James Naremore, Acting in the Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 2. Emphasis mine.~~

~~143~~

~~CHAPTER THREE! The Tactility of Fluctuating Rhythm~~

144 After an extended scene of slow conversation between death merchant Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung) and a swordsman who is going blind (Tony Leung Chiu- wai), there is a brief scene of swordplay. It is about a third the way through Ashes of Time (1994) and by now the film’s rhythm has been established. Long stretches of languor, are broken up by short bursts of largely abstract frenetic action. This scene of fighting, like the film itself, has a pause-burst-pause rhythmic structure. Beginning with long, slow or static shots with little to no movement on the part of the performers, it climaxes in a flurry of brief shots of bodily movement, and then returns to pause and slowness. The scene opens with a static close-up of the hilt of a sword with the left hand resting on top of it. Next we see the blind swordsman in mid shot standing very still as the camera glides towards him. Subtly moving his head but remaining stationary, he proposes saving an arm. Cutting back to the opponent’s sword and hand, we hear the man respond by saying he wants the swordsman’s life. Next we see Ouyang from behind in extreme long shot sitting atop a hill as the frame cranes upward on a right diagonal. This movement is interrupted by an edit to a similar diagonal movement of the camera that captures the motionless Ouyang in a low angled, frontal mid shot watching the two swordsmen from above, waiting. Cut to a high angled close-up of the blind swordsman’s face as he turns his head slowly to look towards the bright sky followed by an eyeline match of the sun emerging from behind a mountain. As the sun emerges a flash of sunlight triggers a violent change in pace from still to frenetic. A flurry of brief shots featuring fast-paced movement follows. Close shots showing the rapid motion of heads, hands, legs, torsos and swords turning, leaping and lunging come in quick succession. The actual confrontation is momentary, reduced to two indecipherable close-ups of the two fighters as they come into contact, the sound of clashing swords and a medium close-up of the blind swordsman as he spins and we hear the sound of flesh being sliced. Here the blind swordsman pauses in mid shot with his sword raised at the end of the movement and stillness pervades once more as he holds the pose. In this scene, as throughout the film, filmic bodies shift drastically back and forth between abstracted, frenetic motion and a jarring, heavy stillness, causing time to feel disjointed, alternately speeding and lagging.

~~Several critics have made reference to the importance of shifts in tempo and temporality in Wong Kar-wai’s films. Peter Brunette observes how Days of~~

Being Wild (1990) alternates ‘dramatically between long moments of stasis and sudden, powerful outbreaks of violent movement.’1 Tony Rayns classifies the director as a ‘poet of time’ describing his films as alternately ‘dilating,

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Peter Brunette, Wong Kar-wai (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2005) 21.~~

~~145 stretching, lurching, dragging, speeding by.’2 Similarly, Janice Tong notes that~~

Wong is part of a cohort of filmmakers ‘whose films contribute to a new cinematic rendering of time by complicating the materiality, or the visuality of time’ describing how he presents ‘incongruous and divergent states of time’ in his work.3 As this opening description suggests, shifts in tempo and temporality are also integral to the director’s filmic bodies.

Both Wong and his cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, have noted the importance of rhythm to the director’s approach to making a film. Wong’s comment that he often gives his performers only ‘the rhythm of the scene’ indicates its significance to bodily performance in his films.4 Discussing his collaborations with the director, Doyle notes, ‘[r]hythm is basic to the work…[t]here’s a musicality to the image; it’s always a dance, and it’s always abstract, because there’s never a script.’5 Once again we can see the effect of

Wong’s approach to making a film on its stylistic attributes. As was noted previously, Doyle contends that ‘music informs the camera’ in Wong’s films recounting how the director had his cinematographer listen to the main theme during the shooting of a scene in In the Mood for Love (2000) so that he could

~~‘get the pacing of the dolly and slight crane move’.6~~

This chapter develops these observations by demonstrating how radical shifts in tempo are integral to the surface textures of his filmic bodies and hence to their potential to engage the spectator bodily. As was established in the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Tony Rayns, ‘Poet of Time’ Sight and Sound 5:9 (September, 1995) 12. 3 Janice Tong, ‘Chungking Express: Time and its Displacements’ in Chris Berry (Ed.), Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (London: British Film Institute, 2003) 47 & 51. 4 Brunette, Wong Kar-wai 126. 5 S. F. Said, ‘The Eyes Have It: Cinematographer Christopher Doyle Makes the World Afresh With Every Film’ Vertigo 2:8 (April, 2005) 3-5. 6 Rachael K. Bosley, ‘Production Slate: Infidelity in the Far East’ American Cinematographer 82:2 (February, 2001) 28.

~~146 previous chapter, his fragmented filmic bodies operate as partial, tactile objects.~~

As the description that opens this chapter suggests, the director creates several fracturing effects by alternately slowing down and speeding up the tempo of his filmic bodies. This chapter focuses on the fracturing effects of tempo in Wong’s films in order to deepen our understanding of film performance in terms of the director’s fragmentary film style. This chapter asks: what is the relationship between performance, the materialisation of time and tempo in Wong’s work?

How are the rhythms of his filmic bodies determined through a range of stylistic elements? How do the fluctuating rhythms of filmic bodies in Ashes of Time – in particular languid and frenetic – each produce their own kind of material texture?

~~What is the nature and effect of the juxtaposition of fast and slow rhythms in film performance? What forms do these juxtapositions take in Ashes of Time?~~

The material properties of tempo in film performance have received very little focused attention in analysis of the ways in which bodies on screen can engage spectators bodily. This is not to say that it has been ignored. Rhythm is a valuable part of much analysis of the affective potential of performance on screen. However, it usually manifests as an important descriptive detail and has rarely been brought to the forefront of analysis of the affective potential of film performance.

An exception to this is Ross Gibson’s short treatise on the relationship between a performer’s breathing and the spectator’s bodily relation to film performance.7 Discussing a scene from Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai

~~(1948), Gibson articulates how Welles’ breathing moderates the tempo of the scene in such a way that the spectator takes on his rhythm in a bodily way.~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 Ross Gibson, ‘Acting and Breathing’ in Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros (Eds.), Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and Performance (Sydney: Power Publications, 1999) 37-48.

147 Importantly, Gibson notes that as film spectators ‘we adopt the rhythm of the focal point in our immediate experience.’8 This chapter develops this idea through an analysis of the many stylistic elements that produce the shifting rhythms of Wong’s filmic bodies and by drawing attention to the close relationship between temporality and tempo in these film performances.

Several key theorists discuss the role of time and temporality in the affective potential of film performance.9 Their work investigates a variety of different kinds of time related to performance in the cinema including the relationship between real time and cinematic time and experiences of time through the prisms of gender, aging, crisis and modernity. This work discusses the affective potential of many different articulations of time in film performance. Like many of these studies, this chapter discusses the relationship between narrative structures and temporality in film performance. In particular, like George Kouvaros’ study of John Cassavetes, this chapter examines the effect of ‘dead time’ in performance on screen.10

What differentiates the analysis in this chapter from existing considerations of time and temporality in film performance is its detailed examination of the relationship between tempo and temporality in terms of their material effects. The chapter seeks to explain the material properties of the divergent tempos of the Wong’s filmic bodies. It does so by developing critics’ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 Gibson, ‘Acting and Breathing’ 46. 9 Ivone Margulies, ‘Delaying the Cut: The Space of Performance in Lightning Over Water’ Screen 34:1 (Spring, 1993) 54-68, Laleen Jayamanne, ‘A Slapstick Time: Mimetic Convulsive Knowing’ in Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 105-145, Jodi Brooks, ‘Crisis and the Everyday: Some Thoughts on Gesture and Crisis in Cassavetes and Benjamin’ in Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 73-104 and ‘Performing Aging/Performing Crisis (for Norma Desmond, Baby Jane, Margo Channing, Sister George, and Myrtle)’ Senses of Cinema 16 (September-October, 2001), http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/16/john-cassavetes/cassavetes_aging/, and George Kouvaros, Where Does it Happen?: John Cassavetes and Cinema at the Breaking Point (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). 10 Kouvaros, Where Does it Happen 99.

148 observations on this aspect of the director’s work, bringing them together with understandings of the role of performance in materialising time in the cinema, the stylistic elements that determine tempo in the cinema and broader understandings of the nature and effects of the juxtaposition of tempo in the cinema.

This chapter argues that the lack of clear narrative purpose that characterises many of the performers’ bodily motions in Wong’s films is key to making time material in his work. It develops observations on the director’s work by bringing them together with Gilles Deleuze’s conception of time-image cinema. It argues that in Wong’s films gestures ‘freed from [narrative] movement’ visualise or emphasise the time or temporality of the gestures’ unfolding.11 This shift in focus is seen as vital to the tactile potential of the temporality and tempo of these filmic bodies.

The chapter examines the stylistic elements that determine tempo and the different states of time at work in Wong’s filmic bodies in order to understand their affective appeal. Broader understandings of tempo in the cinema are brought together with Laura Marks’ conception of haptic cinema to conceptualise the tactile potential of rhythm in these filmic bodies. The chapter develops Marks’ understanding of a tactile mode of film spectatorship to include the stylistic elements that create the divergent rhythms at play in Wong’s film performances.

~~Laura Mulvey argues that in conventional film narratives: ‘the main, middle, section of narrative is characterized by a drive forward, [while]~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 53.~~

149 beginnings and ends are, on the contrary, characterized by stasis.’12 Wong breaks with this convention in Ashes of Time by returning again and again to moments of stasis throughout the film and reducing brief moments of action to abstraction.

This chapter draws from Ackbar Abbas’ conceptualisation of these shifts in terms of the materiality of cinematic temporality to focus on ‘the weight of dead time’ in moments of pause as well as the ‘instabilities of the image, which challenge cognition and recognition’ in moments of furious action.13 Examining how Wong stretches out moments of pause and abstracts ‘bursts’ of action to the point of indecipherability in Ashes of Time, the chapter elucidates the tactile potential of each of these divergent tempos and temporalities.

This chapter explores how, in breaking with this classical narrative convention, Wong creates a different relation between film performance and spectator, centred on the juxtaposed tempos and temporalities of the filmic body.

It develops broader understandings of shifts in tempo in cinema and theatre in order to establish how film performance in Wong is built around the juxtaposition of fast and slow rhythms. It uses these understandings of juxtaposed tempo to offer an explanation of how spectators can engage bodily with this aspect of Wong’s filmic bodies.

Ashes of Time is the strongest example of the fractured tempo and temporality of Wong’s filmic bodies. Abbas argues that in Ashes of Time ‘the implications of genre are followed through to their catastrophic conclusions, giving us in the end the complex continuum of a blind space [elsewhere referred

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12 Laura Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (London: Reaktion Books, 2006) 69-70. 13 Ackbar Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ in Jean-Marc Lalanne, David Martinez, Ackbar Abbas and Jimmy Ngai (Eds.), Wong Kar-wai (Paris: Dis Voir, 1997) 44 & 60.

150 to as blind action] and dead time’.14 As the opening description indicates, shifts in rhythm are enacted in different ways throughout the film. For this reason the chapter will use Ashes of Time as a case study to show how these shifts are central to the material, tactile quality of his filmic bodies.

Describing Fallen Angels, Rayns notes that ‘[s]cenes turn out to be linked as much by the rhythms of movement…as by theme or motif’.15 This chapter theorises how the filmic bodies in Ashes of Time are structured around shifting

~~‘rhythms of movement’ and how this is key to their affective potential for spectators.16 In doing so it continues this thesis’ analysis of film performance in~~

Wong’s work as a matter of film style. It argues that elements of performance and the cinematic apparatus work together to create the divergent rhythms that characterise his filmic bodies and that these rhythms play an important role in engaging the spectator bodily.

~~Ashes of Time~~

The narrative of Ashes of Time stops and starts, unfolding in bits and pieces. As in many of Wong’s films, the plot is convoluted; bits of story pop up and disappear. The first cut of the film ran for over three hours. In its final form of just an hour and half the stories have become hard to follow to say the least.17

~~Intertitles indicating specific moments in time create temporal confusion as they lack any clear connection to the unfolding narrative.~~

The film mainly follows Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung), a death merchant plying his trade in the desert reminiscing about the love of his life (Maggie !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 14 Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997) 61. 15 Tony Rayns, ‘Fallen Angels/Douluo Tianshi’ Sight and Sound 6:9 (September, 1996) 42. 16 Rayns, ‘Fallen Angels’ 42. 17 This analysis is of the original cut of the film rather than the ‘redux’ version released in 2008.

~~151 Cheung) after losing her to his older brother sometime before. Several people wander in and out of Ouyang’s life as the film progresses. The first is Huang~~

Yaoshi (Tony Leung Ka-fai) a swordsman, friend to Ouyang, and a cad in matters of love. Then Murong Yin/Yang (Brigitte Lin), a brother/sister split personality, turns to Ouyang to arrange the murders of Huang and Yang respectively. A young woman with no money (Charlie Young) comes to Ouyang seeking vengeance for the murder of her brother, though she can only offer a basket of eggs and a mule in reward. Another swordsman (Tony Leung Chiu- wai) seeks assistance from Ouyang to make some money so that he may return home before he loses his sight but is subsequently outnumbered in a battle and killed. This first swordsman is followed by another, Hong Qi (Jacky Cheung), who defeats a gang of horse thieves for money but leaves shortly after, having decided that he is not interested in killing for money. Each of these visitors contributes to the stop/start structure of the narrative. The film ends with Ouyang leaving the desert after learning his true love has passed away a few years earlier.

As the description that opens this chapter illustrates, Ashes of Time is structured by a pause-burst-pause rhythm.18 Similar rhythmic patterns based on juxtaposition occur throughout the director’s oeuvre to different degrees but this is especially prominent in Ashes of Time. The rhythmic composition in Ashes of

Time is broadly; short burst of movement, extended period of waiting or pause, short burst of movement, extended period of waiting or pause, short burst of movement, waiting or pause, and so on with stretches of pause becoming longer as the film proceeds. Around three quarters of the film’s screen time is dedicated !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000) 224 and ‘Aesthetics in Action: Kungfu, Gunplay, and Cinematic Expressivity’ in Esther Ching-Mei Yau (Ed.), At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) 80-82.

152 to scenes of slowness and pause, while scenes of action only make up about one tenth.19 The rhythmic structure of the speedy Chungking Express (1994), where frenetic movement dominates, punctuated by sudden moments of pause could be considered the reverse pattern of Ashes of Time.

Importantly, the pause-burst-pause structure of Ashes of Time is in many ways centred on the tempo of filmic bodies. Following three successive and brief scenes of fighting that open the film, it quickly falls into the aforementioned pattern with scenes of pause for remembering, waiting, slow conversation, sitting, eating, drinking, sleeping and staring into the desert extending out more and more as the film goes on. These long sequences of languor are punctuated by brief moments of frenetic movement creating a consistent pause-burst-pause rhythm produced in large part by the shifting tempo of the filmic bodies. Within these action scenes filmic bodies often alternate sharply between a flurry of indistinct movement and rest or pose. A pause-burst-pause rhythmic patterning is also evident in the use of step-printed slow motion in moments of frenetic movement. Hence in Ashes of Time the juxtaposition of tempo operates on the level of the film, within individual scenes and even within individual shots.

As happens throughout Wong’s oeuvre, the pace of bodily performance is often matched with the pace of camera movement and editing, slowing down and speeding up with the tempo of bodily movements. This is evident in the variance of shot duration, manipulation of film speed and camera movement. During sequences of pause filled with everyday actions, camera and editing slow down.

~~In moments of fast-paced action, the speedy movements of performing bodies become a largely incoherent blur via camera movement, film speed and editing.~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 The remainder of the film falls between these two extremes.~~

~~153 Hence in Ashes of Time, as throughout Wong’s cinema, the juxtaposition between action and stillness centres on the filmic body, alternately speeding past and stalling.~~

Abbas conceives of these dramatic shifts in Ashes of Time as ‘blind action’ and ‘dead time’, both of which suggest a break with clear narrative purpose. 20 Whether in violent action, sluggish slowness or pause, bodily performance in Ashes of Time often achieves very little in terms of progression toward clear narrative goals. As was argued in the previous chapter, the disconnection of performance from narrative purpose in Ashes of Time, as elsewhere in Wong’s oeuvre, shifts the focus to gestures as material events.

~~Importantly, this also has consequences for temporality, in particular materialising the temporality and tempo of these filmic bodies.~~

~~Narrative Purpose and Materialising Time~~

~~The narrative purpose of bodily performance is key to the way Wong~~

~~‘materialises’, or ‘visualises’ time in his films.21 Janice Tong asks the question:~~

‘how can the “substance” of cinematic time be experienced, especially the substance of Wong’s cinematic time?’22 Though Tong does not discuss filmic bodies explicitly, the ‘incongruous and divergent states of time…[s]imultaneously represented’ she discusses are largely created by filmic bodies. 23 Understanding the relationship between ineffective gestures and movements and the materialisation of time in Wong’s films is key to an

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 58-61. 21 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 47. 22 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 48. 23 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51.

~~154 understanding of the way spectators may engage bodily with the divergent tempos of his filmic bodies.~~

Jean-Marc Lalanne remarks that: ‘In Chungking Express, Fallen Angels and Happy Together, the characters move incessantly. They run in every direction and yet never manage to do anything’.24 He explains further that in

~~Chungking Express: ‘[t]he problem for the characters…is that they are always in motion and never in action’.25 Lalanne observes that in Fallen Angels:~~

All the characters operate on a principle of pure expenditure: they rush helter-skelter, but their uncoordinated movements get them nowhere. As if gestures could no longer be extended into actions and only ever led to irrational acts; as if the characters suffered from some motor malfunctioning which dragged them into a spiral of confusion and restlessness. 26

These comments suggest that the bodily motions of Wong’s characters often achieve very little or nothing in terms of the conventional purposeful movement towards clear narrative goals. Similarly, bodily performance in Ashes of Time is often disconnected from clear narrative purpose. Here, as in all of Wong’s films, ineffectual bodily actions manifest in both extended sequences of pause or slowness and scenes of rapid bodily movement. Importantly, Lalanne’s description of performance in Wong’s films recalls a key aspect of Gilles

~~Deleuze’s conception of ‘time-image’ cinema.27~~

In his second cinema book, The Time-Image, Deleuze theorises an important shift in cinema that occurred as a result of the experience of World !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 Jean-Marc Lalanne, ‘Images from the Inside’ in Lalanne et al, Wong Kar-wai 24. 25 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 25. 26 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 25. 27 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 25. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image [Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta] (London: The Athlone Press, 1989)

~~155 War II. A vital element of this shift is the break down of the sensory-motor- schema, which Deleuze defines as:~~

the rise of situations to which one can no longer react, of environments with which there are now only chance relations, of empty or disconnected any-space-whatevers replacing qualified, extended space.28

This is very similar to Lalanne’s description of ‘gestures [that] could no longer be extended into actions’ in Wong’s films.29 According to Deleuze, time-image cinema is ‘a cinema of the seer and no longer of the agent’.30 This means that effectual narrative action is replaced by ineffectual action or inaction. This recalls David Bordwell’s similar observation that the loosening of cause and effect structures in art-cinema style comes about partly due to the characters lacking clear motivations, which he notes causes ‘a certain drifting quality’.31

Significantly for the analysis that is to be undertaken here, this inability to react is closely related to the way time-image cinema ‘make[s] perceptible…make[s] visible, relationships of time’. 32 As Deleuze argues, in ‘movement-image’ cinema, which preceded time-image cinema, time is subordinated to narrative movement so that the story unfolds in a logical, linear manner. This means that the narrative purpose of a performer’s movements takes precedence over their temporal structure. Deleuze’s ‘time-images’ are established by breaking with the convention that time is subordinated to movement. Instead time-image cinema is made up of images that are interested in manifesting time itself. In these images !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 Deleuze, The Time-Image 272. 29 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 25. 30 Deleuze, The Time-Image 2. 31 David Bordwell, ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice’ in Poetics of Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2007) 153. 32 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51.

~~156 the temporality of bodily motions takes precedence over narrative information.~~

~~This is integral for an understanding of Wong’s cinematic time in terms of his filmic bodies.~~

Drawing from Deleuze, Tong argues that Wong’s Chungking Express can be categorised as ‘cinema of the seer’, focused on: ‘making images rather than plot-lines, making visible time and temporal relations rather than spaces and movements.’33 As Tong describes: ‘[i]n Chungking Express, Wong’s rendering of a time freed from movement can be found everywhere’.34 Importantly, this relates directly to filmic bodies. The previous chapter established how the lack of interiority and focus on the physicality of performance puts an emphasis on the surface of performing bodies in Wong’s films. Similarly, the lack of clear narrative purpose in many of the performer’s bodily motions allows the temporality of these gestures to be foregrounded.

Deleuze’s theorisation of the relationship between gesture, narrative movement and time provides a way to understand how the material texture of time is integral to performance in Wong’s films. Separated from narrative purpose, the temporality of these filmic gestures is foregrounded, caught up with the materialisation of time. These time-images of performance can be understood as a form of haptic image, in this case focused on the texture of cinematic temporality, whether ‘speeding’ or ‘dragging’.35 By ‘making visible time and temporal relations’ through ineffectual actions, the materiality of each of these divergent temporalities is focused around filmic bodies. 36 In disconnecting bodily motions from clear narrative purpose the rhythm of the performer’s bodily

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51. 34 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 53. 35 Rayns, ‘Poet of Time’ 12. 36 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51.

~~157 motions are also foregrounded for their material, tactile appeal for the spectator.~~

~~In fact the divergent states of “pure time” or time materialised in Wong’s filmic bodies depend heavily on rhythmic variation to create the different states of~~

~~‘time at work’ in his films.37 As this suggests, the materialisation of different states of time is closely related to the material properties of tempo in these film performances.~~

~~Filmic Tempo: Stylistic Determinants and Haptic~~

~~Potential~~

The tempo or rhythm of Wong’s filmic bodies at any given moment is determined by many different stylistic elements, sometimes working cooperatively, sometimes at odds with one another. In Wong’s films these variable tempos or rhythms are determined by a number of elements including the performing body, staging, framing, editing, film speed, camera movement, music and sound. It is by understanding how each of these influences the rhythmic features of these filmic bodies that we can begin to understand the role different tempos and temporalities play in their affective appeal.

David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson’s notion of ‘scanning’ provides a useful conceptual tool for understanding how tempo is determined in the cinema.38 Discussing the relationship between editing and tempo they explain how film spectators ‘scan any film frame for information’. 39 Importantly,

~~Bordwell and Thompson argue ‘[t]his scanning brings time sharply into play.~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 37 Rayns, ‘Poet of Time’ 12. 38 David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction Sixth Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001) 182. 39 Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art 182.

158 Only a very short shot forces us to try to take in the image all at once.’ 40 This means that, as Bordwell and Thompson explain, shorter shots tend to create a faster rhythm and a sense of narrative time moving by more quickly, while longer shots produce a slower rhythm and the impression of time moving more slowly. Though Bordwell and Thompson’s conception of scanning is focused exclusively on the duration of images (editing) and the spectator’s comprehension of narrative information it can be extrapolated to many other stylistic elements that make up the tempo of Wong’s filmic bodies. However, the idea of scanning needs to be broadened in order to analyse how spectators’ bodily engagement with tempo is created through different combinations of bodily performance and the cinematic apparatus, rather than gleaning merely the image for narrative information.

As has already been established, Wong often sidelines narrative development in favour of focusing the spectator’s attention on the surface textures of his filmic bodies. Importantly, these surface textures include the tempo and temporality of gestures. Bordwell and Thompson’s explanation of the way spectators’ decipher the narrative content of images through a process of scanning recalls Laura Marks’ more explicitly embodied description of how spectators attempt to decipher incomplete, abstract or distorted film images by brushing over the film’s surface with their fleshy, tactile eyes.41 While Bordwell and Thompson limit their understanding of scanning to a consideration of its relationship to narrative information, Marks’ is concerned with the material decipherment of the abstract surfaces of images through tactile engagement with the film image. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 40 Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art 182-183. Emphasis mine. 41 Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).

~~159 In his discussion of the optical unconscious, Walter Benjamin includes~~

~~‘slow motion’ as well as ‘extensions and accelerations’ in his list of facilities of the film medium that have the capacity to appeal to the spectator bodily by~~

‘reveal[ing] entirely new structural formations’ of familiar objects. 42 This suggests that manipulations of tempo have a vital material aspect to them. As later analysis will demonstrate, Wong creates filmic bodies that are both “too slow” and “too fast”, alternately allowing exorbitant amounts and not enough time for the spectator to take in the filmic bodies. Bordwell and Thompson’s notion of scanning, and its consequent connection to time and to understanding tempo through the comprehension of narrative information, needs to be expanded to take into account the ways in which spectators experience the material textures of rhythm in film performance through a range of stylistic devices.

Bodily performance is integral in shaping the tempo of Wong’s filmic bodies. The importance of aspects of bodily performance is indicated by the director’s comment that he often gives his performers only ‘the rhythm of the scene’.43 The main ways bodily performance influences tempo are the pace at which the performer moves and the speed and pitch of their speech. As Bordwell and Thompson point out, the pace of movement of objects within a film’s mise- en-scene is an important determinant of tempo with slower movements contributing to slower pace and faster movements contributing to faster pace.44

~~As Gibson notes, the rhythm of the actor’s breathing can also be included in~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ in Hannah Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1968) 236-237. 43 Brunette, Wong Kar-wai 126. 44 Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art 182.

~~160 this.45 This holds true in Ashes of Time where the variation in the pace of the performers’ movements is fundamental to producing shifts in tempo. Similarly,~~

Bordwell and Thompson argue that speech that is loud and quick of pace produces a frenetic feeling, while slow, quiet speech contributes to the creation of a slower rhythm.46 Once again this is evidenced in Ashes of Time most vividly in the measured pace, long silences, and low volume of conversation in scenes with a slower tempo. The way the pace of both bodily movement and speech affects tempo can be understood through the notion of scanning. The pace of gesture and speech, like shot duration, affects the speed at which the spectator must comprehend what is occurring and so contributes to the overall tempo. The tempo created by bodily performance can match or conflict with the tempo being created by other elements of style, including staging.

~~In Wong’s films, staging shapes the tempo of filmic bodies predominantly through obstructing the spectator’s view of performing bodies. As~~

~~Stephen Heath argues, in classical narrative cinema scenes are conventionally staged to represent the unfolding narrative in a clear and unobtrusive manner.47~~

As was argued in the previous chapter, Wong often obstructs the spectator’s view of performing bodies, placing bits of mise-en-scene between the camera and the performing body. This obstructive staging affects tempo, by impeding the spectator’s ability to decipher images of performance.

An excellent example of this is a scene in Ashes of Time, which illustrates how the tempo created by the bodily performance can conflict with the tempo created by the staging of the shot. The scene consists of a single long take featuring Ouyang delivering a speech to a prospective customer. Ouyang sits !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 Gibson, ‘Acting and Breathing’ 45-46. 46 Bordwell and Thompson state in Film Art ‘Speech also has rhythm’ (302). 47 Stephen Heath, ‘Narrative Space’ in Questions of Cinema (London: Macmillan, 1981) 19-75.

161 stationary, speaking at a measured, leisurely pace. However, throughout the scene Wong allows a curtain to blow in and out of the frame, by turns obscuring and revealing the performer. This alternating obstruction speeds up the tempo momentarily by intermittently creating a blurry image of a flittering curtain, impeding our view of the performer. As this example demonstrates, the tempo of

~~Wong’s films is determined in part by the indecipherability and abstractness of his images, this time created through staging.~~

Framing, like staging, influences the tempo of Wong’s filmic bodies by controlling the spectator’s ability to view performing bodies. Peter Brunette notes that ‘dramatic’ shifts in tempo in Days of Being Wild ‘is also manifested in the alteration [sic] between very tight shots and extreme long shots’.48 Closer shots are usually able to focus the spectator’s attention on an object quicker than wider ones. Though it is not a hard and fast rule, there is often a configuration between closer shots and shorter shot duration and wider shots and longer duration. This convention is meant to allow enough time for the spectator to

‘scan’ and decipher the image depending on its size.49 However, as the previous chapter demonstrated, Wong often uses closer shots to abstract or defamiliarise the performing body rather than separate part of the body out to communicate a piece of narrative information. This tendency towards abstraction through framing not only creates tactile images, but also affects the time it takes spectators to comprehend the image both in terms of deciphering what they are looking at and gleaning narrative content.

~~We can see this in Ashes of Time in the sex scene featuring the bodies of several characters. In this scene Wong presents us with a series of brief, tight~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 48 Brunette, Wong Kar-wai 21. 49 Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art 182.~~

162 close-ups of parts of the performers’ bodies as they caress and are caressed by one another. Because of the closeness of the shots it is often difficult to attach the fragments of bodies and gestures to particular characters. This challenge to the clarity of the image speeds up the tempo. Time ‘comes into play’ for the spectator as they struggle to comprehend these defamiliarised fragments of bodies.50 Here, and implicit in Brunette’s account of the correlation between shifts in tempo and shot size in Days of Being Wild, shot duration or editing is also vital to the tempo created.

As Bordwell and Thompson’s discussion suggests, editing is probably the most important determinant of a film’s tempo. Indeed, editing is vital in shaping the tempo of Wong’s filmic bodies. In his films editing often operates as an obstruction to the easy comprehension of images. For instance, as was discussed in the previous chapter, the director sometimes cuts gestures short and creates small ruptures in continuity between one gesture and another. In Ashes of Time, long takes containing very little movement on the part of performing bodies create slow tempos, while fast-cutting in scenes of frenetic bodily action produce a fast rhythm. This reflects Wong’s tendency, in this film as elsewhere in his oeuvre, to allow either too much or not enough time to take in images of performing bodies. Editing is then integral to setting the tempo of his filmic bodies.

Manipulation of film speed is the most straightforward way the rhythms of Wong’s filmic bodies are shaped by the film medium. As was argued in the previous chapter, the director’s variation of film speed creates fractured, abstracted filmic gestures. In Ashes of Time he uses fast motion to speed up

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 50 Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art 182.~~

~~163 selected movements in scenes of action. He also uses slow motion, as he does in all of his films, to extend the duration of movements of performing bodies. In~~

Ashes of Time, as in many of Wong’s other films, step-printed slow motion affects tempo by simultaneously pausing and accelerating bodily motions within a single shot. Hence manipulation of film speed directly affects the pace of

~~Wong’s filmic bodies by literally slowing it down, speeding it up, and even doing both simultaneously.~~

Camera movement contributes to the tempo of these filmic bodies in various ways both on its own and in concert with performing bodies, staging, framing, editing and film speed. Wong and Doyle’s remarks on the importance of music for the director in communicating just what he wants from his cinematographer suggests the importance of the relationship between camera movement and rhythm in the director’s films.51 In Ashes of Time, a fast-paced tempo is achieved in part by the use of a fast moving handheld camera.

Conversely a slow pace is achieved partly by the camera remaining stationary or moving slowly and smoothly. Once again this can be understood via the spectator’s comprehension of the image. A jostling, fast moving handheld camera for instance can make a quick grasp of the content of the image difficult, whereas this is usually easier with slower, smoother camera movements.

Lastly, the pace and volume of sound (diegetic or non-diegetic), including speech, contributes to the tempo of Wong’s filmic bodies, with loud rapid sound usually creating a fast rhythm, and slow quiet sound having the opposite effect. Sound can match or contradict the pace of other elements. For instance, in Ashes of Time drums and loud, high choral voices in scenes of action

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 51 Bosley, ‘Infidelity in the Far East’ 28.~~

~~164 feed into the creation of a faster tempo, while melodic pipe music or silence in scenes of pause have the opposite effect.~~

In Wong’s films the above stylistic elements work together in various combinations to determine the tempo and temporality of his filmic bodies from moment to moment. All these rhythmic elements affect the surface textures of his filmic bodies. Not only is time materialised in Wong’s films, but different tempos create vastly different states of time. Understanding how fast and slow tempos produce different material textures is vital to an understanding the tactility of tempo in his filmic bodies. Hence next we will explore the fast and slow tempos at play in the filmic bodies in Ashes of Time and the different material textures they create.

~~The Divergent Textures of Filmic Rhythm~~

~~Fast and slow tempos each enact their own material texture in Wong’s films. As~~

Ross Gibson notes, as spectators ‘we adopt the rhythm of the focal point in our immediate experience.’52 This recalls Dziga Vertov’s comment regarding film spectatorship: ‘I fall and fly at one with the bodies falling and rising through the air.’53 Both of these comments suggest spectators engage with film images through a tactile mode of viewing. In the cinema fast and slow tempo usually produce their temporal equivalents. In Ashes of Time, both brief moments of action as well as extended scenes and sequences of pause materialise very different states of time. The director’s penchant for divergent tempos and temporalities can be understood as an important part of his fragmentary, tactile

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 52 Gibson, ‘Breathing and Acting’ 46. 53 Quoted in Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York: Routledge, 1993) 27. Taken from Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception [Translated by Patrick Camiller] (London: Verso, 1989) 11.

165 approach to film narrative. In Ashes of Time, performing bodies are defamiliarised by both stasis and frenetic motion – dead time and blind action. In this film the stillness and pause of filmic bodies extends out almost swallowing the film, while fast-paced action briefly and intermittently accelerates their movement to the point of indecipherability. Each of these extremes enacts different forms of fracture that can appeal bodily to the spectator. Here we will explore the two main rhythms of Wong’s filmic bodies, slowness and frenetic action, in Ashes of Time, for their stylistic and material properties as well as their tactile appeal.

~~“Moments of latency swell”~~

In Ashes of Time, Wong expands moments of languor to the point that they take up the greater part of the film’s screen time. As Lalanne points out, ‘[m]oments of latency swell out until they constitute the film’s only material. The battle scenes are left out.’54 Though Lalanne’s comments are not exactly correct, they do indicate how Ashes of Time functions as a film made up mostly of the moments between the action. Lalanne discusses how in Ashes of Time Wong works against both sword-fight and western genre conventions, through the insertion of long pauses.55 Lalanne draws attention to the fact that instead of generically taking on the world, heroically making their way through incredible vistas, righting wrongs and saving those in distress, ‘[t]he characters, almost always filmed from very close up…spend the whole film waiting, frozen in pretentious and languid postures.‘56 Stephen Teo also notes this aspect of Ashes of Time saying: ‘[w]hen not fighting for their lives, the characters appear !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 54 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 13. 55 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 13. 56 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 13.

~~166 subdued, dreamlike, dazed, even drugged. They speak in low monotones. There are many shots of the characters doing nothing but staring into the distance.’57~~

~~These comments suggest that filmic bodies are fundamental to the slow tempo and slow movement of time created in these sequences.~~

Ackbar Abbas reads these scenes in terms of their temporality, arguing that they emphasise ‘the weight of the dead time’.58 He defines ‘dead time’ as the suspension of action replaced with waiting and taken up with everyday actions.59

~~Once again this returns us to Deleuze’s conception of time-image cinema.~~

Deleuze’s comments on the time-image cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni are particularly useful in defining the connection between moments of pause in performance and the weight of dead time. Deleuze describes how Antonioni’s characters spend a lot of their time being tired and waiting referring to these states as ‘attitudes of the body’.60 Similarly, Abbas notes how in Ashes of Time:

~~‘between the brief moments of blind action are the long moments of waiting for something to happen…[e]verybody waits’.61 For Deleuze, ‘daily…attitudes’ or~~

~~‘postures’, such as tiredness and waiting, ‘put…time into the body’.62 What~~

~~Deleuze means by this is that these everyday bodily attitudes put emphasis on the time of their unfolding rather than narrative progression. This links back to~~

Tong’s classification of Wong’s characters as Deleuzian ‘seers’ rather than agents of narrative.63 The particular feeling attached to the time that is put into the filmic body in these scenes of slowing and pause can be described as a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 57 Stephen Teo, Wong Kar-wai (London: British Film Institute, 2005) 81. 58 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 60. 59 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 61. 60 Deleuze, The Time-Image 189. 61 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 61. 62 Deleuze, The Time-Image 189. 63 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51.

~~167 heaviness or dragging. Importantly, this quality of heaviness or dragging is focused on filmic bodies.~~

In Ashes of Time, as in many of Wong’s other films, characters not only do a lot of waiting but also often lack energy, at times even falling asleep. At different points in Ashes of Time, three different characters are shown sleeping.

~~Ouyang is shown sleeping twice, matched with slow, gliding camera movements and slow dissolves between shots. As Deleuze suggests, it is through these~~

~~‘daily’ postures that filmic bodies come to operate as material markers of time.~~

~~This sense of slowness is caused not only by performing bodies but a range of stylistic elements.~~

A lengthy sequence mid way through Ashes of Time demonstrates the key features of filmic bodies in these moments of slowness or dead time. In this extended sequence running for over six minutes of screen time the characters sit around eating, drinking, conversing in slow, muffled tones, and starring blankly into the desert. It is a point in the film where everyone seems to be waiting. A nearly blind swordsman waits with swordsman’s agent Ouyang for some horse thieves. While the swordsman waits for the horse thieves he is also waiting to go blind. During this sequence, Ouyang and the swordsman observe a young girl who waits outside Ouyang’s abode for a swordsman to come along who will avenge her brother’s death. The characters are for the most part strung out (on wine or reverie); they gaze into nothingness, lost to themselves and to us. A sense of boredom pervades as the characters wait around for something to happen. Unlike the fast-paced scene that has come before it, in this sequence, as in all scenes of pause, the tempo of the filmic bodies is very slow. Pause distends

~~168 and bodies in stasis are made heavy by the weight of slow moving, empty or dead time.64~~

The sequence is made up of many drawn out wide shots of the characters doing very little. The average shot length is ten seconds. Wong makes use of slow camera movements to move from one character to another or to track the performers’ unhurried movements. There are many lengthy wide shots either with slow, smooth camera movements or static shots of the characters eating or staring into the desert. For instance, one extended, gliding shot depicts Leung

~~Chiu-wai sitting stationary atop a hill watching the desert, and waiting for the thieves he has been hired to kill.~~

In this sequence, as in many of Wong’s films, instead of employing a shot-reverse-shot editing pattern for many of the conversations the director either keeps both performers in the frame or only one of the participants in a conversation is shown, while the other is heard offscreen. For example, in a conversation involving the blind swordsman and Ouyang, Wong places the swordsman in the foreground facing the camera in medium close-up. As they converse, Cheung appears screen right over Leung Chiu-wai’s right shoulder by lifting a short curtain. Not facing one another, the two converse. Each speaks at a slow, measured pace inserting significant pauses. The camera pans slightly to the left as Cheung walks leisurely from the right to the left of the screen behind the stationary Leung Chiu-wai and looks out of frame into the desert. In this way

~~Wong avoids editing back and forth between the two performers as they speak.~~

~~Leung Chiu-wai remains still throughout the shot, while Cheung moves in an unhurried manner from one place to the other and holds the same pose for the~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 64 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 60.~~

169 majority of its duration. Similarly, later in the sequence, only Leung Chui-wai’s largely emotionless face is shown in a high angled, profile close-up, for most of a conversation, while the young woman with whom he is conversing remains offscreen. Through these unconventional methods of shooting conversation,

Wong creates long takes, allowing great lengths of time for the spectator to take in each image. This slows down the pace of the sequence, matching the performers’ slow movements or stillness, creating languid, heavy filmic bodies.

For much of Ashes of Time these languid bodies are seemingly weighed down by inaction as time perceptibly drags by. The performing body, camera, and editing all work in union to bring the tempo of these filmic bodies right down. Slow moving time is enacted and materialised through the filmic body. In this way filmic bodies come to operate as material markers of time. The time of a tired posture or an unhurried gesture’s unfolding invites the spectator to engage bodily with the gradually unfolding dead time.

The texture of slow moving time becomes a matter of ‘losing the thread’ of narrative movement and instead shifting the spectator’s focus to the slow tempo and temporality of these filmic bodies.65 Rey Chow argues that Wong’s use of slow motion ‘magnif[ies] the granularity’ of everyday gestures ‘turn[ing] such movement into occasions for alternative experience’ by ‘defamiliarizing the nature of (repetitive, habitual) motion through manipulation of its cinema texture and viewing time’. 66 Here too, extended scenes of pause become a way of inviting the spectator to be drawn into the material weight of slow moving time.

As such, slowness and pause are vital to the material texture of the tempo of these filmic bodies. By understanding the particular materiality of this languid !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 65 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 46. 66 Rey Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns: On the Uses of the Everyday in the Recent Films of Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-wai’ New Literary History 33:4 (Autumn, 2002) 647.

170 tempo and temporality we are able to understand an important aspect of Wong’s fragmentary aesthetic in terms of filmic bodies. Wong interrupts these scenes of pause and slowness with brief scenes of furious action. These bursts of frenetic movement create a very different kind of tempo and temporality, and hence a very different material texture.

~~“Movement becomes abstract”~~

Though extended periods of pause take up the bulk of Ashes of Time, not all the battle scenes are left out as Lalanne suggests. Ashes of Time is punctuated by brief fast-paced moments of furious bodily movement. Like many of the bodily actions in Wong’s films, these fast-paced motions are often disconnected from clear narrative development. Just as the weight of slow moving time is materialised in long sequences of languor, scenes of fast paced bodily motion create their own form of material texture.

~~Through his use of several stylistic elements, Wong transforms bodily action in these scenes into textured, abstract, fast-paced blurs. Abbas describes these scenes well, saying:~~

It is no longer a choreography of action that we see, as in other kungfu or gangster movies, but a composition of light and color, into which all action has dissolved; a kind of Abstract Expressionism or Action Painting. Action has now become non-figurative. In all the fight scenes, it is only when the action slows down, that light resolves itself into something recognizably human; but when we do catch a glimpse of a human figure, it is always at the fatal moment of dealing out death, or in the throes of dying.67

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 67 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 60-61.~~

171 As Abbas notes above, during the brief outbreaks of violence that occur in Ashes of Time, performing bodies become mere blurs of movement. He aptly describes how bodily action ‘dissolves’ into ‘a composition of light and colour’ in these scenes.68 Abbas explains these moments in terms of the ‘instabilities of the image, which challenge cognition and recognition’ in Wong’s films.69 This recalls Sam Rhodie’s comments on the escaping quality of the director’s filmic images. Just as can be found in many of Wong’s images of performance, in these bursts of action the pace of the filmic bodies is accelerated to the point that ‘[i]f you try to grasp the image, touch it with your senses, it disappears or migrates’.70

~~Abbas and Rhodie’s comments suggest that the filmic bodies in these scenes are fundamental to producing a fast-paced tempo and a tangible sense of time~~

~~‘speeding by’.71~~

A good example of frenetic tempo in Ashes of Time occurs in a section of the film’s opening sequence.72 The scene in question involves Ouyang fighting several assailants in what appears to be some sort of barn, though it is never made clear where or why. Like the scene described at the beginning of this chapter and many of the scenes of action throughout the film, the scene follows a burst-pause-burst rhythmic pattern with fighters often posing before and after attacking each other. What appears to be quite complicated choreographed fighting is transformed into a series of highly abstract, barely legible images.

~~Here, as in most of the scenes of violent action, Wong’s synthesis of fast bodily motion, hand-held camera movement, fast motion and step-printing creates~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 68 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 60-61. 69 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 44. 70 Sam Rohdie, ‘Wong Kar-wei, L'auteur’ Iris 28 (Autumn, 1999) 109. 71 Rayns, ‘Poet of Time’ 12. 72 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 60.

~~172 highly abstract images, making it difficult for spectators to comprehend what is happening.~~

The bodily motions of the performers in this scene are in the main large, fast and highly choreographed gestures of attack and defence. Bodily movement marked by sudden shifts between fast-paced motion and momentary pause contributes to the jarring pause-burst-pause rhythm of the scene. Ouyang wears long, flowing attire and has long hair that when in motion makes his face and bodily actions difficult to decipher. The alternating rhythm of bodily performance and the visual ambiguity created by the performer’s hair and costume is amplified by several other stylistic devices that make up these filmic bodies.

Camera movements not only track performers’ rapid motions as they fight, but also shift attention from one figure to another allowing performing bodies to slip in and out of the frame. This falling in and out of frame makes it difficult to get an accurate impression of what is taking place. The camera matches the alternating pause-burst-pause tempo of the performers’ movements with several static shots of performers pausing followed by frenetic camera movement as they attack each other furiously. The jostling hand-held movements contribute to an overall blurred effect when combined with fast bodily movements.

The combination of fast bodily motions and camera movements is both augmented by the manipulation of film speed. Wong occasionally uses slight fast motion to increase the pace of bodily actions in these scenes. Like the defamiliarising effect of slow motion and step-printing discussed in the previous chapter, fast motion draws attention to the materiality of the film medium and to

~~173 the particular temporality of filmic bodies. In these moments time speeds up momentarily as fast moving bodies are abstracted, challenging the comprehension of their movements.~~

~~Step-printing is especially important in these moments of ‘blind action’.73~~

As was noted in the previous chapter, step-printing produces a highly tactile jittery effect in the image where the movement of objects in the frame is both paused and skipped. The fracturing effect of this juxtaposition will be discussed in detail later in the chapter. Here we will attend to its smudging effect, which, like all the above elements, reduces bodily motions to indistinct but highly textured marks on the film’s surface. This blurring also makes edits hard to identify and actually creates a false impression that there are more edits than there actually are, intensifying its already frenetic pace.

In sharp temporal contrast to scenes of pause, the average shot length of the fight scenes, when actors move quickly, is around one second, increasing the abstraction and blur created by fast-paced gestures, camera movement and step- printing. This particular scene has an average shot length of about 1.7 seconds, which at first appears to be even shorter as a result of the blurry motions that overwhelm the image. As was discussed in the previous chapter, the director also sometimes creates minor ruptures in linearity from one filmic gesture to another.

~~As in other scenes of rapid bodily motion from his oeuvre, the brevity of these shots and subtle ruptures in continuity create a fast tempo and the impression of time moving quickly.~~

~~These fast moving, partial, hard to decipher, filmic bodies register for spectators as highly textured moments of frenetic action. Overall, the~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 73 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 59.~~

~~174 combination of performing body, camera movement, film speed and editing create a quick tempo, which in turn gives the impression of time speeding by.~~

Once again the filmic body operates as a material temporal marker, in this case time flying rather than dragging. Wong takes what Yvette Bíro refers to as ‘the vitality of speed’ and transforms it into largely ‘non-figurative’, highly tactile images of performance.74 These frenetic filmic bodies represent prime examples of how Wong’s images operate ‘just on the brink of consciousness’.75 These blurs of movement create a tangible sense of frenetic pace and fast moving time.

~~As should now be clear, Wong renders filmic bodies as sharply contrasted material markers of time, stretching and distilling time through the filmic body.~~

But what is the effect of these highly divergent renditions of time on the filmic body? How does Wong construct filmic bodies around these violent juxtapositions of tempo/temporality? Further, how do we as spectators engage with such temporal juxtapositions of filmic bodies?

~~Juxtaposed Tempo~~

The juxtaposition of these divergent tempos is vital to the materiality of Wong’s filmic bodies in Ashes of Time and indeed to all of his filmic bodies in different variations throughout his oeuvre. In Tong’s main example from Chungking

Express, Leung Chiu-wai moves very slowly while bodies around him speed past in a blur caused by step-printed slow motion. Tong argues that the disparity between fast and slow movements in this scene not only ‘make[s] perceptible…make[s] visible, relationships of time’ but also fragments the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 74 Yvette Bíro, Turbulence and Flow in Flow: The Rhythmic Design [Translated by Paul Salamon] (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, c2008) 39. Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 60. 75 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance 48.

~~175 ‘materiality of time’ by presenting divergent temporalities in the same shot.76~~

Further, Tong suggests that Wong’s fragmentary approach to cinematic temporality is important in encouraging a bodily mode of engagement with his films. In what follows, the juxtaposition of divergent tempos is linked back to broader cinematic and theatrical conventions. From this we can understand radical shifts in tempo as part of Wong’s fragmentary approach to cinematic temporality. This understanding of the juxtaposition of tempo is used to analyse how it operates in Ashes of Time. Identifying the three key forms of fractured tempo it is analysed in terms of how it manifests on 1) the level of the whole film

~~2) within scenes and 3) within shots, the effects of each of these forms on filmic bodies and the bodily engagement of spectators.~~

~~Traditions and Effects~~

The alternating tempo of Wong’s filmic bodies produces particular effects. As has already been suggested, the relationship between movement and stillness in the cinema is an important one. This is especially important in Wong’s films, where he draws attention to the contrast by continually shifting back and forth between highly divergent tempos. Connecting this rhythmic pattern back to broader cinematic and theatrical conventions provides ways to understand the effect of these shifts on his filmic bodies.

In Death 24x a Second, Laura Mulvey states: ‘I am…interested in the representations of time that can be discovered in the relation between movement and stillness in cinema.’77 Drawing from Deleuze, Mulvey discusses cinema’s movement/stillness paradox at the level of film narrative. She argues that

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 76 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51. 77 Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second 7.~~

176 conventional film narrative starts from stasis, moves from stasis to movement, and then returns back to stasis.78 Wong’s films do not fit the conventional pattern outlined by Mulvey. Instead they contain extended moments of stasis punctuated haphazardly by fast-paced movement or vice versa, with many stops and starts.

~~In Ashes of Time, instead of placing moments of stasis at the beginning and the end, Wong allows moments of pause to almost engulf the film.~~

For Mulvey, the movement of narrative in the cinema is determined by both ‘the camera and character’.79 She argues that these elements ‘carry forward the story, from shots to sequences through the linking process of editing.’80 This means that, according to Mulvey, in the conventional stasis-movement-stasis structure, the film’s tempo is fundamentally connected to the movement and stasis of both performers and the cinematic apparatus. Importantly, Mulvey extends her investigation of the relationship between movement and stillness in the cinema to instances of pose in performance.

Mulvey discusses the display of star bodies in moments of pose enacted by both the performing body and the holding of the shot.81 She contends that these forms of display represent a discontinuous aspect of conventional linear narrative films. ‘Star performance’ Mulvey argues ‘is…very often…the source of screen movement, concentrating the spectator’s eye, localizing the development of the story and providing its latent energy.’82 Further, Mulvey contends that star performance manages the difficult task of bringing together

~~‘energy with a stillness of display.’83 Pose, Mulvey contends, is integral to the~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 78 Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second 69-70. 79 Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second 70. 80 Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second 70. 81 Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second 163. 82 Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second 162. 83 Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second 162.

177 way stars perform. She argues that these moments of display disrupt the linear flow of narrative and ‘allow…time for the cinema to denaturalize the human body’.84 This suggests that the filmic body in languor comes to exist more sharply as a form of display through its contrasting relationship to movement.

Importantly, these shifts produce a kind of disruption to the linear flow of the images. Bordwell’s analysis of alternating rhythms in Hong Kong action cinema provides a further understanding of just how this works in Wong’s cinema.

Bordwell identifies the pause-burst-pause pattern as a unique characteristic of Hong Kong action films.85 While he concedes that this pattern does not occur in every Hong Kong action film, he argues that its rarity in Hollywood action films makes it a noteworthy stylistic feature.86 Bordwell’s description of this pattern is useful as it is related directly to performance. He notes how:

The Hong Kong performer has recourse to something like Eisenstein’s idea of recoil. For the actor’s key movements are often separated by noticeable points of stasis. We might describe this as the pause-burst- pause pattern…A pause often enframes each instant of action, giving it a discrete, vivid identity. The result is a kind of physics of combat and pursuit: out of quiescence rises a short, sharp action, which ceases as energy is switched off and stored for the next action. A parallel strategy rules the overall scene of fight or pursuit: moments of near- absolute stillness alternate with bursts of smooth, rapid-fire activity.87

~~Bordwell analyses this pattern in a few different scenes from Hong Kong action films. Like Mulvey, Bordwell highlights how this alternating tempo effects a~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 84 Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second 163. 85 Bordwell, ‘Aesthetics in Action’. 86 Bordwell, ‘Aesthetics in Action’ 82. 87 Bordwell, ‘Aesthetics in Action’ 80-81.

~~178 disruption or ‘separat[ion]’.88 Elsewhere he discusses briefly Wong’s use of step- printed slow motion as an adaptation of this Hong Kong cinema convention.89~~

While Bordwell does not identify the pause-burst-pause pattern as a key structural element of Wong’s films, his understanding of this pattern can be extended for analysis of its multifaceted presence in the director’s filmic bodies.

~~Bordwell’s use of the term ‘enframe’ is particularly useful in explaining the way pause separates and contains gestures.~~

The idea of ‘enframing’ provides a useful conceptual tool to understand the effect of rhythmic juxtaposition. Indeed the term has been used to describe certain cinematic effects on performers and objects. Tom Gunning uses the term

‘enframed’ to make a distinction between early trick films and the later narrative tradition.90 For Gunning, enframing refers to a sense of display, in particular the display of performing bodies. He contrasts ‘enfram[ing]’ in early cinema to

~~‘emplot[ting]’, which he argues dominated later classical narrative cinema.91~~

James Leo Cahill defines enframing in the cinema as ‘the active work of the film frame, and its role – alternately highly visible and invisible – in constituting and delimiting the content of filmic images’. 92 As Cahill points out, the term enframing originates in Martin Heidegger’s ‘The Question Concerning

~~Technology’.93 Though what Heidegger means by enframing (Ge-stell) proves~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 88 Bordwell, ‘Aesthetics in Action’ 80. 89 Bordwell, ‘Planet Hong Kong’ 277-278. 90 Tom Gunning, ‘“Primitive” Cinema: A Frame-up? Or the Trick’s on Us’ Cinema Journal 28:2 (Winter, 1989) 10. 91 Gunning, ‘Primitive Cinema’ 10. 92 James Leo Cahill, ‘How It Feels to Be Run Over: Early Film Accidents’ Discourse 30:3 (Fall, 2008) 296. 93 Cahill, ‘How It Feels to Be Run Over’ 296. Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ in The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays (New York: Garland Pub., 1977) 3-35.

~~179 difficult to pin down, it describes an effect of reduction or ‘enclosing’.94 As~~

Gunning explains, in early film ‘[t]he frame presents the action displayed to the spectator’.95 The idea of enframing in the cinema as Bordwell refers to it could be said to refer to an effect of framing, separation or display that is enacted in this case through the performing body in concert with various elements of the cinematic apparatus. The concept of enframing will be used here to describe the way pause separates the divergent tempos of the performer for display.

~~Investigating the source of this pause-burst-pause rhythmic structure in Hong~~

~~Kong cinema provides further understanding of its relationship to the display of performing bodies.~~

~~Bordwell traces the pause-burst-pause pattern back to several sources, some of which relate directly to performing bodies. He argues that this pattern in action cinema might find its roots in:~~

Very likely the martial arts tradition, with its repertory of forms and combinations, cultivated a belief that combat involved a balance between poised stillness and swift attack or defense. Possibly this tendency was reinforced by the long pauses and outbursts of violence to be found in Sergio Leone’s influential westerns. And perhaps the technique owes something to the Peking opera tradition of liang hsiang (“displaying”), which presents a frozen pose assumed for an instant after an acrobatic feat.96

~~The most important of these is the connection to a form of display in Peking opera, though of course there is a great deal of overlap between martial arts and~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 94 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ 19. Cahill, ‘How It Feels to Be Run Over’ 296. 95 Gunning, ‘Primitive Cinema’ 10. 96 Bordwell, ‘Aesthetics in Action’ 82.

180 Chinese theatrical traditions.97 The description of moments of pause (liang hsiang) as a form of display in Peking opera recalls the idea of enframing. Once again this understanding of shifting tempo suggests it has a separating or fracturing effect on filmic bodies. Yung Sai-Shing’s discussion of the relationship between Hong Kong action cinema and Chinese theatre offers some further understanding of this connection.

Yung charts the close relationship between Chinese theatrical traditions and Hong Kong cinema. Like Bordwell, Yung notes the focus on the body of the performer as common to both Chinese theatrical traditions and Hong Kong action cinema.98 Linking this back to conventions of Chinese opera Yung argues that:

such a principle of highlighting the action/body of the actors has “moved” from the traditional opera stage to the contemporary action cinema. To a certain extent, the visual concentration on the body in motion in Hong Kong action cinema is a continuation and extension of Chinese theatrical aesthetics. 99

The focus on display of the body described by Bordwell and Yung is key to the aesthetics of both Hong Kong action cinema and Wong’s filmic bodies. The director’s films, like a lot of Hong Kong action cinema, are interested in displaying the virtuosity of bodily movement.

~~But while Hong Kong action films use this pause-burst-pause rhythm to depict the gestures of the performer more clearly, Wong tends to cinematically~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 97 Yung Sai-shing, ‘Moving Body: the Interactions Between Chinese Opera and Action Cinema’ in Meaghan Morris, Siu Leung Li and Stephen Ching-kiu Chan (Eds.), Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005) 21-34. 98 Yung, ‘Moving Body’. 99 Yung, ‘Moving Body’ 29.

181 render the bodily actions of his performers incoherent in moments of action, contrasting this with a sense of the heavy weight of ‘dead’ time in drawn out moments of pause. Yung’s argument is similar to Bordwell’s contention that

Hong Kong action cinema places an emphasis on ‘expressive amplification’ of bodily movement through cinematic means.100 For Bordwell, the pause-burst- pause pattern is one way in which the body of the performer is cinematically amplified, ‘emphasiz[ing] the concreteness and clarity of each gesture’. 101

Bordwell describes the effect created by this rhythmic pattern in Hong Kong action cinema as ‘a clarity born of discontinuity’.102 However Wong’s differing use of this pattern in his tendency towards contrasting ‘instabilities of the image’ in scenes of fast movement with ‘the weight of dead time’ in instances of pause instead shows an interest in juxtaposing states of time.103

~~Scholarly work on Chinese theatre points to a connection between radical shifts in tempo and the ‘visualisation’ of time. Studies on Chinese theatre support~~

~~Bordwell and Yung’s observations on the pause-burst-pause rhythm and focus on display of the performing body in Hong Kong action cinema.104 Furthermore,~~

Jo Riley also links this rhythmic juxtaposition to temporality stating that: ‘[a] liangxiang pose is a moment when the spectator has the chance to perceive presence in summary, in a pose. However, the moments of liangxiang also dictate the rhythm of the performance. Time is marked.’105 Like Mulvey’s conception of display in film performance, this marking of time indicates a !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 100 Bordwell, ‘Aesthetics in Action’ 87. Emphasis Bordwell’s. 101 Bordwell, ‘Aesthetics in Action’ 78. 102 Bordwell, ‘Aesthetics in Action’ 86. 103 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 44 & 60. 104 In Peking Opera: A Short Guide (Hong Kong and London: Oxford University Press, c1996) Elizabeth Halson notes that in Peking Opera ‘movements are punctuated by a ‘pause’ or Liang Hsiang, where the actor assumes a statuesque pose and holds it for a moment with his body perfectly poised before proceeding with the next set of movements’ (51). 105 Jo Riley, Chinese Theatre and the Actor in Performance (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 233. Emphasis mine.

182 disruption in the linear flow.106 Similar to Abbas’ understanding of Wong’s use of shifting rhythm, Riley’s comment points to the important relationship between tempo and the depiction of time through performance. The idea that time is

~~‘marked’ through this juxtaposition between pause and movement is vital to understanding the effect of this rhythm on Wong’s filmic bodies.~~

Bringing the ideas of Mulvey, Bordwell and Riley together, the effect of juxtaposed rhythm can be understood as an important form of fracturing. This fracturing is brought about by a separation that occurs through radical shifts in tempo. These shifts highlight the divergent temporalities that create juxtaposed tempo. As Tong notes, by setting contrasting temporalities side-by-side time is materialised and fractured. Importantly, in Wong’s films the filmic body enacts this fracturing. With this understanding of the effect of the juxtaposed tempo in mind we will now turn to an analysis of three different forms of juxtaposed tempo in his filmic bodies in Ashes of Time.

~~Three Forms: Film, Scene and Shot~~

Ashes of Time provides an excellent example of the juxtaposed tempos that characterise Wong’s filmic bodies. Though this rhythmic pattern is utilised across his oeuvre, it is put into practice most vividly in this film. This juxtaposition of tempo takes many forms in the film. The main three forms that can be identified are 1) the pause-burst-pause rhythmic structure of the film itself, that is, from one scene to the next, 2) the same rhythmic structure within certain scenes and 3) divergent tempos within individual shots. What needs to be elucidated are the various ways these juxtapositions are created, how filmic

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 106 Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second 163.~~

~~183 bodies are shaped by each of these forms and in turn how spectators may engage with them.~~

The rhythmic structure of Ashes of Time is broadly: short burst of movement, extended period of stasis, short burst of movement, extended period of stasis, short burst of movement, extended period of stasis, and so on. As analysis of sequences of pause and moments of action in Ashes of Time demonstrates, scenes concerned with slowness or pause are drawn out, making up much of the film’s running time. Conversely, scenes of action are but a flash of abstracted movement on the screen, creating an alternating tempo between scenes and a pause-burst-pause structure for the film as a whole. The film stops and starts, switching unpredictably between the frenetic incoherence of action and the weight of drawn out pause.

As the previous analysis of juxtaposed tempo indicates, by shifting between movement and stillness from one scene to another the contrasting temporalities of these divergent tempos come into sharp focus. This alternating rhythm creates a pattern of temporal disruption and fracture. Time dragging and speeding by, contrasted from one scene to the next is centred on these filmic bodies. As Mulvey, Bordwell and Riley suggest, these fractures bring the tempo of the filmic body into focus, separating it out. This separation or fragmentation has the effect of highlighting the materiality of each of these disparate rhythms.

The pause-burst-pause rhythm of these filmic bodies from one scene to the next jostles the spectator between the ennui produced by the slow moving or static filmic bodies and the sense of comprehension just beyond our grasp, always escaping, speeding forward, in moments of blind action, bringing each of these divergent material textures into focus for the spectator.

184 A similar effect is also generated by the juxtaposition of movement and pause within scenes. The description that opens this chapter illustrates how this rhythmic pattern is frequently employed within scenes of fighting. As the opening description suggests, the scene enacts a pause-burst-pause pattern internally. Running for just over a minute, 10 of the 20 shots that make up the scene take place in a five second flurry of movement. The speed of the editing matches the speed of the performer’s movements. It begins with longer shots of the characters standing stationary with little or no bodily movement, then when the bodies move quickly so too does the editing. During the brief burst of action the average shot length accelerates from around six seconds to half a second.

Once the brief, furious bodily movement subsides the editing returns to its slow pace. Looking at this scene once more we can now demonstrate the role of this alternating rhythmic structure in producing filmic bodies that have a tactile quality for spectators.

As happens between scenes, the pause-burst-pause rhythmic structure within this scene produces an enframing effect, foregrounding each of the divergent rhythms and temporalities of the filmic body. The stasis and frenetic movement of these filmic bodies each becomes a highly material event, each enacting its own temporal texture – the heaviness of stilled time on the one hand and the sense of things moving too fast for us to grasp on the other. The sense of temporal fracture that occurs between scenes is intensified in the sudden shifts that occur within scenes. Time alternately speeds and slows, disjointing the linear movement of these filmic bodies. Instead of ‘scanning’ these images for narrative content, as spectators we ‘adopt the rhythm’ alternately feeling the

185 inertia of stillness and the giddiness of frenetic motion.107 Such fractures are even more amplified within Wong’s images, especially those that employ step- printed slow motion, and it is here that the tactility of temporal fracture is most vivid.

Bordwell’s observation that step-printing represents Wong’s adaptation of the pause-burst-pause rhythm common in Hong Kong action films, and the analysis of this aspect of his film style already presented in this and the previous chapter, indicates a pause-burst-pause pattern can also be identified within single shots in Wong’s films. Tong also notes the ‘incongruous and divergent states of time in the same image’ in Chungking Express in a scene of step-printed slow motion featuring Cop 663 (Leung Chiu-wi) and Faye (Faye Wong) at the

Midnight Express.108 The juxtaposition of tempo within the image is achieved through particular combinations of bodily performance and step-printed slow motion, though it occurs in several variations throughout his work. This manifestation of alternating rhythm reveals the tactility of temporal fractures in its most intense, palpable form.

During many moments of furious action in Ashes of Time, and indeed in many of Wong’s other films, step-printing is employed to transform bodily motions into powerful, temporally fractured and highly tactile film images. As the earlier analysis of these action scenes suggests, this stylistic element creates a jarring pause and skip within individual shots. For instance, in a moment in the scene of action described earlier featuring Ouyang fighting in a barn, the sweeping gestures of the fighters are transformed into jittery filmic motions, minutely stopping and speeding forward.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 107 Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art 182. Gibson, ‘Acting and Breathing’ 46. 108 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51.~~

186 These minute fractures in temporality create highly tactile filmic gestures. As Tong argues, the disparity between fast and slow created by step- printing causes ‘[t]he materiality of time [to be] fractured visually, opening itself up to different temporal intensities in the one shot.’109 As this chapter has shown, each of these ‘temporal intensities’ enacts its own materiality. In juxtaposition this materiality becomes even more apparent as they are separated out and highlighted for display. This fragmentation creates highly tactile, haptic images of performance.

In other examples from Wong’s oeuvre these temporal fractures within shots are created not only through step-printed slow motion alone, but also in collaboration with the deliberate modulation of tempo on the part of the performer. For instance, in the scene from Chungking Express described by

Tong, both Leung Chiu-wai and Faye Wong move at a radically slower pace to the rest of the diegetic world, whose pace is manifested by the bodies moving past them. The final effect is achieved by shooting the scene at around six frames per second and having the main actors move extremely slowly, then printing each frame a few times over to bring it up to 24 frames per second. Throughout the scene the counter girl Faye leans on the counter, motionless, except for her blinking eyes. Leung Chiu-wai’s slow movements have a slight jittery quality to them. Meanwhile, the bodies around them move at a hurried pace, registering merely as blurs dashing across the screen. This is an excellent example of the way the performer works with the cinematic apparatus to create a temporally fragmented filmic body in Wong’s films. 110

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 109 Tong, ‘Time and its Displacements’ 51. 110 James Udden explains Wong’s technique of using different camera speeds in ‘The Stubborn Persistence of the Local in Wong Kar-Wai’ Post Script 25:2 (Winter-Spring, 2006) 67-79. Bordwell also discusses this technique in Planet Hong Kong 277.

187 In Wong’s films performing bodies alone can also produce divergent tempos operating within a single shot. For instance, in Days of Being Wild there is a shot in which Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) stands over a man he is beating. In the shot Yuddy stands motionless with his back to the camera in the foreground while his opponent sits on the floor, highly agitated, trying to put some distance between himself and Yuddy by pushing himself up against the wall. Each of the men’s divergent tempos stand out in contrast to one another, stillness and agitation coexist in the image, creating a similar fracturing effect to the scene featuring Leung Chiu-wai in Chungking Express. There are many other instances of this sort of juxtaposition in Wong’s films. This demonstrates how the juxtaposed rhythm of filmic bodies returns and varies across the director’s oeuvre.

The fracture produced through shifts in tempo segments or fragments performing bodies, presenting them as part-objects. Juxtaposed tempo then represents an important aspect of Wong’s fragmented filmic bodies that takes a number of forms. Though it takes many forms in Wong’s films, each of these shares the effects of separation, disruption and materialising time and rhythm.

Juxtaposed tempo can then be understood as part of the director’s broader acceptance of the lesionistic drive of the film medium. The medium itself can slow down and speed up movement. His embrace of this aspect of the cinematic apparatus illustrates once again his interest in the fragmentary, material properties of capturing and configuring performing bodies filmically. Through this we can also understand the juxtaposition of tempo as vital to the way

~~Wong’s filmic bodies invite the spectator to invest in drawing together these part-objects of performance.~~

~~188 Conclusions~~

The fractures caused by Wong’s approach to tempo and temporality are vital to the way Wong’s filmic bodies can engage the body of the spectator. In attending to this aspect of his film style we can see how his filmic bodies are structured around ‘rhythms of movement’ rather than the strict, linear progression of narrative.111 The lack of narrative purpose in performance is vital to the way time and tempo is materialised in Wong’s films. The visualisation of different states of time is reliant on several stylistic elements that determine the tempo of filmic bodies. Slow tempo and temporality produces a sense of the heavy weight of languid time, while frenetic tempo and time speeding by creates a feeling that things are constantly moving beyond our grasp. Radical shifts between pause and stillness contribute to the materialisation of fractured temporality in Wong’s filmic bodies. There is a palpable sensation that comes about as a result of these rapid shifts in tempo, a sensation that is fundamentally about a particular jarring relation to the alternating, disparate rhythms and states of time of these filmic bodies. In Ashes of Time, as in all Wong’s films, we are jostled between sudden, furious, purposeless movement and extended moments of pause. This disjointed structure invites spectators to engage actively in connecting these fractured temporalities. The fragmentation of the cinematic materiality of time brings the very texture of time to the surface through the filmic body. Just as Marks argues that the incomplete image prompts the viewer to invest bodily in deciphering the image, so too does Wong’s juxtaposition of different temporalities create a form of tactility that invites spectators to invest in making connections between

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 111 Rayns, ‘Fallen Angels/Douluo Tianshi’ 42.~~

~~189 scenes, shots and even one frame to another.112 Hence the fracturing of the tempo/temporality of the filmic body contributes to its tactile, haptic quality.~~

Understanding the effect of radical shifts in tempo as part of Wong’s fragmentary film style is vital to understanding film performance in his work as well as its bodily appeal for spectators. In reading the many forms of this pause- burst-pause rhythm through performance, this chapter illustrates the centrality of performance to this aspect of his unique film style. In doing so we can see how through film performance Wong reworks conventions of Hong Kong cinema and

Chinese theatre mixing them with elements of art-cinema style. Analysing the effects of radical shifts in tempo as part of Wong’s broader fragmentary aesthetic brings tempo to the forefront of analysis of the affective appeal of film performance in general. As Mulvey suggests, shifts in tempo form a part of many film performances. In elucidating the tactile potential of this aspect of film performance, this chapter offers new avenues for study focused on the rhythmic features of other filmic bodies and the affective potential of these rhythmic qualities. This close attention to rhythm represents one way in which we can articulate the specific ‘temporalisation’ of film performance.113 Wong not only breaks with depictions of a linear time he also departs significantly from the depiction of linear space. His fragmented spatial configurations are fundamental in shaping his tactile filmic bodies and hence are the subject of the next chapter.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 112 Marks, The Skin of the Film 163. 113 Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 9.~~

~~190~~

~~CHAPTER FOUR A Study of Performance in Small Spaces~~

191 In a brief shot at the end of a montage mid-way through In the Mood for Love (2000) we view So Lai-chen (Maggie Cheung) just left of the centre of the shot, visually hemmed in by both a hallway and a doorframe, sitting cross-legged on a chair reading a newspaper. Resembling many shots that have come before it, the wide framing allows the walls to take up most of the screen. Shot from the opposite end of the hallway, the walls occupy three quarters of the frame pushing in from both the left and the right. In the narrow slither of space between the walls and furnishings we see Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) enter in slow motion approaching the seated Lai-chen with two cups of tea. The two converse as Lai-chen hands Chow the newspaper, picks up her tea and sips it. We do not hear what they say, only the film’s main theme, an emotive waltz, which plays over the shot. Chow reads the paper as he moves to lean against the table behind Lai-chen. The shot setup, staging and gestures are familiar, resembling many arrangements that have come before and will come after it. This shot concludes a brief montage featuring each of these two main characters seated at desks in their cramped offices writing, obscured by curtains, furnishings and cigarette smoke. Taking place exclusively in small and narrow settings, most of which are cluttered with furniture and objects, the performing bodies in this film move habitually, carefully and repetitively so as to negotiate these tight spaces and the other bodies within them. Watching this shot unfold, each of the performer’s everyday gestures is marked by a feeling of constraint, or more specifically, a tangible sense of the weight of spatial constriction. It is as if, through the accumulation of similar shot setups and the same restrained bodily motions performed over and over, these tight and cluttered settings and performing bodies have become enmeshed, inextricably and tangibly interwoven with one another.

Wong Kar-wai’s films are unique in their attentiveness to the shared materiality of performing bodies and their physical surrounds. This approach is vital to the surface textures of his films and to the tactile qualities of his filmic bodies. As outlined in Chapter Two, Teo argues that in Ashes of Time (1994) Wong creates

‘textures’ with ‘clothes, baskets, lanterns and hats, umbrellas and slippers’ as well as ‘ripples on the water, desert scrubs, craggy and cloud formations’.1 From these textures, he argues, the director builds a tactile cinematic narrative.2 This focus on the surface textures of the performer’s surrounds is also evident in the

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Stephen Teo, Wong Kar-wai (London: British Film Institute, 2005) 79. 2 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 79.~~

192 scene in Fallen Angels (1995) involving Michelle Reis and the jukebox analysed in Chapter Two. In In the Mood for Love walls, hallways and furnishings, among the other material elements of the interiors and exteriors in which the film takes place, create these textures and hence are integral to the tactility of this cinematic narrative.

Teo contends that the way performing bodies interact with other objects in the mise-en-scene in Wong’s films through actions such as ‘hands stroking, squeezing and rubbing’ is essential to the ‘tactile sensation’ produced. 3

Similarly, in In the Mood for Love restrained, habitual and repetitive bodily motions combine with setting and the cinematic approach to space in ways that emphasise the tactility, the materiality of all elements in the frame creating distinctly spatially enmeshed filmic bodies.

~~Bernard Hemingway observes how the characters in In the Mood for~~

Love ‘live in single rooms, work in congested offices and travel the corridors that connect the two’, denoting an unrelenting sense of the physical surrounds hemming in the performing bodies.4 As the description that opens this chapter suggests, in In the Mood for Love partial, tactile and repetitive configurations of bodily performance, setting and cinematic approach are vital in fostering a tangible feeling for spectators that the material surrounds are closing in on these filmic bodies. This chapter then investigates how Wong’s ‘spatial code’ is an important part of his unique filmic bodies and their affective potential for spectators.5

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 79. 4 Bernard Hemingway, ‘Space’ section of ‘The Cinema of Wong Kar-wai a “Writing Game”’ Senses of Cinema 13 (April-May, 2001), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/13/wong-symposium.html. 5 Edward Branigan, ‘The Space of Equinox Flower’ Screen 17:2 (Summer, 1976) 102.

~~193 The significance of setting in Wong’s filmmaking process is evidenced in the importance he places on the selection of locations. Speaking about his working process the director says:~~

Most often, I select the location before I decide what to shoot. After a location is selected, I determine the sounds therein (people’s voices, car noises), what type of people would frequent the place, what they would say to each other and how they behave. In other words, the location determines how you shoot the scene.6

This comment indicates that for Wong locations are fundamental to the development of story, character, the interactions between characters and even the cinematic approach that is taken in his films. Choices regarding setting are therefore integral to way the director’s films come together. Discussing the shooting of In the Mood for Love, cinematographer Christopher Doyle reiterates the importance of choices regarding location saying:

The single most determinative element of our films is their locations. We look for a place that suggests a character, his or her raison d’etre, where and whether the camera or the character will move, et cetera. Even the lenses we use grow laterally from what the place says to us.7

Like the director, Doyle suggests that the choice of setting influences not only story and character but also the movements of performing bodies and the style of shooting. The apartment setting in In the Mood for Love is indicative of the way setting affects both bodily performance and the cinematic approach in

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 6 Joanna Lee, ‘CineVue Interviews Wong Kar-wai’ CineVue 11:1 (1996) 14. 7 Rachael K. Bosley, ‘Production Slate: Infidelity in the Far East’ American Cinematographer 82:2 (February, 2001) 24.

194 Wong’s films. Doyle says of shooting in the apartment ‘I had to hold the camera above my head as I could not fit a tripod in the corner with me’.8 As the opening description indicates, in In the Mood for Love the same and similar shot setups and bodily motions are repeated over and over, emphasising the persistent restriction of the locations and the limited range of movements that can occur within them. However, Wong tends to return again and again to similarly narrow, small and cramped locations throughout his work, suggesting that his choice of setting is in fact part of an ongoing interest in spatial constriction.

~~In an interview with Leung Chui-wai discussing shooting the final scene in~~

~~Days of Being Wild (1991), the director makes a clear connection between the constricted nature of the setting and bodily performance saying:~~

I made changes to our set to fit in your character; I reduced the ceiling by half. The character you played grew up in such a space and became larger than the space. I thought that helped you create a very unique body movement.9

The ‘very unique body movement’ the director refers to can be characterised as the kind of restrained and automatic bodily mode of performance also prominent in In the Mood for Love. Wong’s comment points to a vital relationship between space and performance in his work, an important and hitherto barely discussed element of the director’s films.

The affective potential of the relationship between setting, bodily performance and the construction of cinematic space in film performance has !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 In Sophie Boord (Producer), Interview with Christopher Doyle (2009) in ‘Wong Kar-wai’ section of ‘Screen Worlds’ exhibition at Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia. Also Bosley in ‘Infidelity in the Far East’ says ‘Doyle also says that ‘visual repetition – a recurring element in Wong’s work – has a very special cause as well. “We [sometimes] repeat a movement partly because that’s the only small section of usable street we got”’ (26). 9 Wong Kar-wai, ‘Tony Leung’ Interview 35:8 (September, 2005) 198.

195 received very little focused attention. Like tempo, the material aspects of the relationship between bodily performance and setting in film performance often appear as an important descriptive detail that is only ever analysed briefly.10

Lesley Stern’s detailed analysis of the affective properties of relationships between performance and particular things in the cinema is an exception to this.11 Stern argues that in the cinema narrative, gesture and the cinematic apparatus work together to refigure everyday things such as kettles and cigarettes in ways that imbue these filmic objects and gestures with affective appeal for the spectator. Like Stern, this chapter argues that combinations of everyday settings and gestures are refigured by Wong’s partial, tactile, repetitive approach to film style in ways that foster the affective potential of relationships between bodily performance and other elements of the mise-en-scene for spectators. While this chapter does touch on the relationship between performance and particular objects, such as curtains and desks, it is interested in examining the tactile aspects of the broader spatial configurations of Wong’s filmic bodies. In this way it seeks to develop understandings of the affective potential of film performance as configurations of bodily performance, setting and cinematic technique.

Wong’s spatial code is very different from that of classical narrative cinema. Instead of a continuous, linear space that acts as a background for an unfolding story, he creates fragmented, discontinuous and highly material cinematic space that sometimes competes with traditional narrative concerns.

~~This chapter investigates how his fractured, tactile and repetitious approach to~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 10 George Kouvaros, Where Does it Happen?: John Cassavetes and Cinema at the Breaking Point (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). 11 Lesley Stern, ‘“Paths That Wind through the Thicket of Things” (Things in the Cinema)’ Critical Inquiry 28:1 (Autumn, 2001) 317-338.

196 cinematic space affects his filmic bodies and the way spectators may engage bodily with them. It argues that in attending to the ways in which Wong brings the material properties of these physical surrounds to the forefront through a variety of stylistic techniques, we may understand how performance in his films is inextricably intertwined with its material surrounds, creating filmic bodies that are highly tactile enmeshments of bodily performance, setting and the film medium.

In order to do so, this chapter establishes how Wong’s tendency to set his films in ordinary, everyday locations is integral to the way his films emphasise the material textures of the performers’ physical surrounds. Examining the function of everyday settings in his work more broadly and more specifically in

In the Mood for Love, it argues that the sense of the everyday in his films is produced through combinations of everyday gestures and everyday locations. It posits Wong’s focus on everyday settings and gestures as essential to his ability to abstract or defamiliarise the ordinary or familiar to create haptic, tactile film images.

The chapter elucidates how Wong’s tendency to set his films in small, cramped and cluttered locations is fundamental to the way the physicality of the relationship between bodily performance and other material objects in the frame is foregrounded in his work, considering the effects this has on his filmic bodies.

Drawing a comparison between the tight-fitting dresses worn by Cheung and the physically constrictive settings in In the Mood for Love, it argues that tight and cluttered settings serve to foreground the physicality of performers’ bodily motions. It contends that foregrounding the physicality of the relationship between bodily performance and their material surrounds is essential for the

~~197 creation of these spatially intertwined filmic bodies as well as the tactile quality of this entanglement.~~

~~Comparing Wong’s focus on the materiality of setting and objects to~~

~~Douglas Sirk’s melodramas, the chapter examines how this aspect of both directors’ work differs from classical narrative space. Then, pinpointing how~~

Wong departs from both Sirk and classical narrative space, it examines the effect of these departures on filmic bodies and on how spectators might engage with them through an analysis of the key elements of his unique ‘spatial code’

(staging, framing and editing). The chapter identifies and examines the main aspects of Wong’s film style related to the construction of partial and tactile cinematic space. It demonstrates how the director renders combinations of performing bodies and physical surrounds as highly tactile, partial filmic images, both lesionistic (incomplete and hence open to connection) and haptic (inviting the spectator to invest bodily in experiencing and deciphering them). It argues that Wong’s spatial code, especially as it is employed in In the Mood for Love, emphasises the sense of setting and objects closing in on performing bodies. It also asserts that this sense of spatial constriction is greatly intensified through repetition.

~~The chapter argues that in In the Mood for Love repetition builds a tangible sense of spatial constriction centred on the filmic bodies of Cheung and~~

Leung Chui-wai. Drawing from Stern and Tong, it is argued that by returning again and again to the same and similar tactile configurations of setting, bodily performance and use of the cinematic apparatus Wong produces a layering effect. It is argued that this layering effect is closely related to the ghosting, resonance or fracture effect achieved through the repetition of gestures. The

198 chapter contends that by investing bodily in deciphering and connecting these fragmentary, tactile images, the spectator may experience a somatic sense of spatial constriction focused around their engagement with these filmic bodies via a kind of cumulative effect as the film goes on.

This chapter posits Wong’s approach to space as lesionistic and haptic in order to theorise its importance to the tactility of Wong’s filmic bodies. It offers an understanding of film performance as a comingling of performing bodies and other material elements in the frame. More specifically, it elucidates the potential for repetitive configurations of bodily performance, setting and cinematic technique to create a palpable sense of spatial constriction centred on filmic bodies through a tactile mode of spectatorship.

~~In the Mood for Love~~

In the Mood for Love is the strongest example of Wong’s tendency to create filmic bodies that are an inextricable cinematic melding of the performer’s body and their material surrounds. The film epitomises how his partial, material and repetitive cinematic space is crucial to the way spectators can engage somatically with these bodies in the frame. It is the best example of the director’s tendency to use repetition to produce a tangible, somatic sense of spatial constriction centred on filmic bodies for spectators.

~~Set in Hong Kong in the 1960s, In the Mood for Love tells the story of~~

Chow Mo-wan (Leung Chui-wai) and So Lai-chen (Cheung), two married people living in the same apartment building who discover that their spouses are having an affair with one another. Set mainly in this cramped apartment building within a gossipy Shanghainese community, the two spend most of the film attempting

199 to figure out how the affair happened, while trying to avoid having an affair of their own. Over the course of the film the small apartment building becomes an external manifestation of their physical and emotional constriction as they gravitate toward one another.

The two main performances in In the Mood for Love are characterised by physical and emotional restraint. Throughout the film Cheung and Leung Chiu- wai maintain largely expressionless faces. Leung Chui-wai remarks that for In the Mood for Love he focused heavily on paring back his performance and restraining his emotion, saying:

I wanted to do something different from my previous work, I wanted to do as minimal as I could this time round without any facial expression and not much dialogue. I tried to project a character like that with very minimal expression, but I found it quite difficult at the very beginning. It’s quite hard, it’s quite painful, that you can not release your emotions…this character keeps everything inside, very good at hiding his emotions, so there’s no facial expression, you cannot see any emotion on his face. 12

Cheung’s performance, like Leung Chiu-wai’s, is also for the most part characterised by a lack of emotional expression. However, Cheung does express some emotion through her face, creating a contrast with Leung Chiu-wai’s blank mode. For instance, in the scene where Chow tells Lai-chen they should not see each other anymore Leung Chiu-wai delivers this emotional news with a largely blank expression. Following this scene Chow and Lai-chen are seen embracing.

~~Though Cheung emotes, crying on Leung Chiu-wai’s shoulder, he maintains an~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12 Trish Maunder, ‘Interview with Tony Leung’ Senses of Cinema 13 (April–May, 2011), http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/13/wong-kar-wai/leung/.

~~200 emotionally blank expression. The restrained performance mode complements the constricted nature of the settings in which the film takes place.~~

Bernard Hemingway aptly describes In the Mood for Love as ‘a study of love in small spaces’.13 This chapter alters Hemingway’s description slightly classifying In the Mood for Love, and indeed all of Wong’s films in one way or another, as a study of performance in small spaces. Like most characters in

Wong’s films, the two protagonists live in pokey rented rooms, work in small, cluttered offices, frequent fast food restaurants and move between these locations via narrow streets and back alleys. As in most of his settings, the quality of spatial constriction in the interiors stems not only from the actual small size of the space but also the clutter of furnishings and objects that serve to contract space even further.

The small office Lai-chen shares with her boss is an excellent example of this. The tiny room barely fits the two desks and multiple filing cabinets that take up most of the space in the room. Every surface is piled up with papers, files, telephones and desk lamps. The office is so small in fact that most of the shots are taken from outside the room looking in through the doorway or the partially curtained windows. The blinds on the window to the outside world remain closed throughout all the scenes that take place there, further emphasising its cramped composition. Chow’s office, the apartment rooms and all the other interiors, and indeed exteriors, have a similarly cramped quality.

~~This spatial constriction is further highlighted by Wong’s cinematic approach.~~

~~In In the Mood for Love, the tightness of the settings is continually emphasised through choices regarding staging and framing. As in all of his~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 13 Hemingway, ‘Space’.~~

201 films, Wong often allows parts of the physical settings to impinge on performing bodies, at times coming between the camera and performer creating a partial, obstructed view. He repeatedly uses curtains and windows that set up material partitions between performing bodies and the camera. Framing often emphasises the narrowness of halls, smallness of rooms and clutter of furniture and objects. As in the opening description, doorways and windows are used to frame bodies vertically within the mise-en-scene, creating a sense of vertical spatial pressure moving inward from either side of the screen. This device is also used to great effect in Happy Together (1997) and 2046 (2004). One stylistic attribute particular to In the Mood for Love that further highlights the cluttered nature of the settings is the continual placement of the camera at hip height, which allows furnishings to crowd even further into the frame.

The emphasis on the lack of space also extends to exterior locations in the film. Most of the exterior scenes are set in narrow back streets. Nearly all of these scenes take place at night, many in the rain. In exterior nighttime scenes the sparse use of lighting functions in a similar way to interior walls, creating

“walls” of darkness that limit the space. Rain also has a similar effect of surrounding the performing bodies – alternately obscuring, entrapping, and weighing down upon them. For instance, at one point in In the Mood for Love the two protagonists get caught in the rain and are forced to stand together under a small shelter that juts out over a street level window. In this scene the heavy rain determines the performers’ ability to move. Wong visualises the rain as a veritable wall by alternating between side-on mid and medium close-up shots with the falling water behind Leung Chiu-wai rendering the street almost indiscernible, and extreme wide shots that allows a curtain of rain to intercede

202 between camera and performers. It is a moment in the film when the physical entrapment of the performing bodies tangibly presents the situation in which the characters find themselves: in close proximity but unable to act on their desire for one another. Hence in In the Mood for Love, as happens elsewhere in Wong’s oeuvre, exterior locations operate in a similar way to interiors, fostering a consistent sense of enclosure. Choices regarding framing play an important part in this.

~~In In the Mood for Love Wong makes heavy use of framing that~~

‘interiorises’ exterior settings.14 As Ackbar Abbas explains, in Wong’s films exterior shots have consistently tight framing and are shot on angles that emphasise the walls and obstructions. This, he argues serves to ‘interiorise’ outdoor locations, creating a closed-in feeling.15 Exterior scenes in In the Mood for Love are consistently made up of shots that frame performing bodies up against walls or allow exterior walls to take up much of the frame. Like his tendency to set scenes at night and in the rain, these choices regarding framing work to create the closed-in or interiorised feel of the film’s space. This emphasis on the closed-in quality of the settings is intensified in In the Mood for

~~Love through the most consistent use of repetition that can be found in Wong’s oeuvre.~~

As the opening description indicates, In the Mood for Love is built around several sets of repetition. Though, as Chapter Two demonstrated, this occurs to varying degrees throughout Wong’s oeuvre, In the Mood for Love is most thoroughly built around repetitions and hence represents the ultimate !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 14 Ackbar Abbas, ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’ in Linda Krause and Patrice Petro (Eds.), Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003) 153. 15 Abbas, ‘Cinema, The City, and The Cinematic’ 153.

203 example of the way this aspect of his style operates within a single film. Scenes of the two protagonists going out for noodles, having dinner together, walking home from dinner, working at their desks, moving back and forth through the narrow apartment hallway and other everyday activities recur over and over taking up much of the film’s screen time. Here, as in Wong’s other films, bodily performance, setting and its cinematic treatment all play an important role in these repetitions.

The film is precisely and consistently structured around the repetition of the same and similar shot setups of settings combined with repeated bodily actions with slight variations. Repeating setting, gesture and cinematic treatment in the same or similar combinations develops a sense of spatial restriction centring on the filmic bodies of Cheung and Leung Chiu-wai. As the opening description suggests, these repetitions have the potential to build up, enacting a cumulative effect on the spectator over the course of the film.

Importantly these repetitions rely on sets of everyday gestures performed in ordinary settings. As Adrian Martin and Rey Chow both observe, In the Mood for Love represents the most consistent example of Wong’s use of the everyday in his oeuvre.16 Importantly, the sense of the everyday in this film is dependent on both the gestures performed and the setting in which they are performed. As this suggests, everyday settings are an important element of Wong’s film style and particularly vital to the spatial attributes of his filmic bodies.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 16 Adrian Martin, ‘Perhaps’ Senses of Cinema 13 (April-May, 2001), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/13/wong-perhaps.html [Accessed: March 2007. Web source no longer available.]. Rey Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns: On the Uses of the Everyday in the Recent Films of Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-wai’ New Literary History 33:4 (Autumn, 2002) 639-654.

~~204 A Brief Note on Everyday Spaces and Gestures~~

Wong’s tendency to set his films in ordinary, everyday locations is an important aspect of his film style and key to the affective potential of his filmic bodies. The most frequently recurring settings in his films are everyday locations such as bars, restaurants, market places, taxis, buses, trains and train stations, rented apartments, hotels, and communal kitchens. While both Wong and Doyle link the selection of location to the emergence of elements such as story and character, as has already been noted, the director continually returns to the same and similar stories and characters, frequently enacted through everyday scenes and gestures. This suggests that rather than viewing location as the origin from which stories, characters and scenes emerge, Wong’s choices regarding setting could be understood as part of an ongoing broader concern with the everyday.

Furthermore, this concern with the everyday is often crucial to many aspects of film performance in his work. It is important then to clarify the role of these everyday settings in the director’s work, particularly in relation to his filmic bodies.

While this interest in everyday locations is prevalent throughout Wong’s body of work, it is most apparent in In the Mood for Love. Chow notes how in this film the director uses ‘everyday phenomena, including banal human relationships, familiar locations, and mundane objects, as a mean of signifying.’17 Similarly, in discussing In the Mood for Love, Martin notes its

‘focus…on the unspectacular and repetitive gestures, spaces and rituals of everyday lives.’18 In the Mood for Love is mostly set in a shared floor of an apartment building, the offices of the two protagonists, a noodle stand, a

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 640. Emphasis mine. 18 Martin, ‘Perhaps’. Emphasis mine.~~

205 restaurant, a hotel room and the narrow back streets somewhere between these locations. All these everyday settings are filled with ordinary, habitual bodily motions and interactions. For instance, as residents pass each other in the apartment hallway making their way from one room to another they often enact the same bodily motions – turning their bodies to the side and conversing about banal topics such as what is being made for dinner as they pass one another.

~~There are also many scenes featuring Chow and Lai-chen at their places of work, interacting with co-workers and bosses and working late at their desks.~~

Throughout the film these ordinary or ‘banal’ motions and interactions performed in these everyday locations return in a pattern of recurrence and variation taking up the greater part of the film’s screen time.

In the Mood for Love is largely made up of these and countless other everyday scenes that rely on both the location and the actions and interactions that take place within them to produce a sense of the everyday. Though it pervades all Wong’s films in one way or another, it is in this film in particular that everyday settings and actions work together most consistently to create a strong sense of the everyday. By way of contrast, Fallen Angels features acts of violence and strange and outrageous sales pitches in everyday settings such as restaurants and grocers, creating a jarring mix of the histrionic and the quotidian.19

Wong’s pairing of an almost exclusive focus on everyday locations with the use of the film medium to abstract and distort these familiar settings is key to his film style and an aspect of his work that situates it within the domain of what

David Bordwell terms art-cinema style. According to Bordwell, location !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 Lesley Stern, ‘Putting on a Show, Or the Ghostliness of Gesture’ Senses of Cinema 21 (July- August, 2002), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/21/-sd_stern.html [Accessed: March 2007. Web source no longer available.].

206 shooting is an important aspect of ‘objective realism’, a key element of art- cinema.20 Like most of Wong’s films, In the Mood for Love is shot entirely on location. His almost exclusive use of ordinary, nondescript locations has been linked to the work of art-cinema director, Michelangelo Antonioni.21 Shooting on location in everyday settings, Wong uses the film medium and repetition to defamiliarise, derealise and distort these everyday spaces in the same way he does the everyday gestures that occur within them. Bordwell understands this as

‘expressive realism’ and argues that mixing it with ‘objective realism’ is a convention of art-cinema style.22 Importantly, this process of defamiliarisation brings us back to Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer and Laura Marks’ ideas about the tactile qualities of the film medium and the ability of film images to address the spectator in a bodily way.23

Benjamin’s optical unconscious and Kracauer’s material dimension as explained by Miriam Hansen, and Marks’ haptic images all provide a theoretical framework for understanding how the film medium can transform objects to create images that engage the spectator in a direct, bodily way. Importantly, all these conceptualisations rely on the familiarity of the objects transformed.

~~Explaining the optical unconscious, Benjamin discusses the close up ‘focusing on hidden details of familiar objects’ and the ‘explor[ation] [of] commonplace~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20 David Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ in Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985) 206. 21 Robert M. Payne, ‘Ways of Seeing Wild: The Cinema of Wong Kar-wai’ Jumpcut 44 (Fall, 2001), http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc44.2001/payne%20for%20site/wongkarwai1.html. 22 Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ 207 & 212. 23 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art’ in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ Hannah Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1968) 236-237 and Miriam Hansen, ‘Benjamin, Cinema and Experience: “The Blue Flower in the Land of Technology”’ New German Critique 40 (Winter, 1987) 179-224, ‘Benjamin and Cinema: Not a One-Way Street’ Critical Inquiry 25:2 (Winter, 1999) 306-343, ‘“With Skin and Hair”: Kracauer’s Theory of Film, Marseille 1940’ Critical Inquiry 19:3 (Spring, 1993) 437-469, and ‘Introduction’ in Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) vii- xlv, Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).

207 milieus’. 24 The ‘new structural formations’ ‘reveal[ed]’ by the cinematic apparatus theorised by Benjamin, require that the object being revealed be sufficiently familiar to disrupt the spectator’s habitual relation or response to it.

Similarly, Kracauer’s insistence on the material dimension of film describes how film images connect with the spectator’s bodily perception of the world through its transformation into film images.25 And further, Marks’ haptic images describe the way distorted and partial images of familiar objects invite the spectator to engage their bodily memory in deciphering them.26 All these understandings point to the important relationship between the everyday and the tactile potential of film images. As analysis later in this chapter will demonstrate, Wong uses the cinematic apparatus to defamiliarise and abstract his everyday settings to create highly tactile cinematic space, which has specific effects on his filmic bodies.

While this relationship between the everydayness of settings and the defamiliarisation they enable is an important aspect of the tactility of Wong’s filmic bodies, the key recurring physical quality of spatial constriction is also crucial.

~~Physical Constraints: Setting, Costume, and Bodily~~

~~Performance~~

~~Discussing Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955), Rainer Werner~~

~~Fassbinder notes that ‘in Sirk, people are always placed in rooms already heavily marked by their social situation’.27 Fassbinder says of this film starring Jane~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art’ 236. 25 Hansen,‘With Skin and Hair’ and ‘Introduction’. 26 Marks, The Skin of the Film. 27 Quoted in Mary Beth Haralovich, ‘All That Heaven Allows: Colour, Narrative Space, and Melodrama’ in Peter Lehman (Ed.), Close Viewings: An Anthology of New Film Criticism (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1990) 65.

208 Wynman, ‘[i]n Jane’s house there is only one way in which one could possibly move.’ 28 These observations on the relationship between setting and performance in Sirk’s film are useful for examining the relationship between bodily performance and the physical constriction of settings (and costume) in In the Mood for Love. In this film, the everyday settings also have a consistent material quality of tightness or constriction. Though constrained settings feature heavily in the vast majority of Wong’s other films, they are most prevalent in this film. The relationship between bodily performance and these tight physical surrounds can be understood as essential to the tactile potential of these filmic bodies.29

An examination of Cheung’s tight-fitting costume and its effects on her performance in In the Mood for Love provides a useful way to understand the broader relationship between spatial constriction and performing bodies in this film. The tight-fitting cheongsams worn by Cheung throughout In the Mood for

~~Love represent a physical constraint comparable to the settings in which the film takes place. Speaking of this Cheung said:~~

they gave me a lot of limitations of my movements…But from that I think that is how the character is built because of limitations of her movements. She became very reserved on how she held herself as a person.30

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 Haralovich, ‘All That Heaven Allows’ 65. 29 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 79. 30 Matt Langdon, ‘An Intimate IF Super-8 with In the Mood for Love Director Wong Kar-wai and His Lead Actors Maggie Cheung Man-yuk and Tony Leung Chiu-wai’ IF Magazine ‘Shooting the Mood’ Issue 24, (February, 2001), http://www.ifmagazine.com. [Accessed: September 2004. Web source no longer available]. In the same article discussing getting into character In the Mood for Love, Leung Chui-wai also describes the suits his character wears as ‘the type of suit that restricts you.’

209 This revealing comment demonstrates the importance of Cheung’s tight costuming in determining the nature of her bodily movements. As Cheung notes, her cheongsams put actual limits on the performer’s movements, which contributes to the quality of restraint that characterises her physicality in the film.

The ‘limitation…of movement’ described by Cheung is borne out in the mostly small and repetitive bodily motions that make up her performance. At the beginning of the film’s shooting Cheung was asked to test the limits of her costume. Production and costume designer William Chang asked her to reach for something while she was lying on a bed. Upon attempting this gesture the dress ripped, giving her an indication of what she could and could not do while in costume.31 Much like the reduced ceiling and small room size in Days of Being

Wild then, this costume ‘helped [Cheung] create unique [restrained] body movement’.32 This suggests that an important effect of physical constraint on these performing bodies is the foregrounding of the material texture or physicality of bodily motions.

~~Indeed, discussing the effect of this piece of costuming on Cheung’s performance, Olivia Khoo identifies how physical constraint brings about the~~

‘accentuat[ion] of Cheung’s body’ and ‘foreground[ing] of bodily aspects of performance’. 33 Like Fassbinder’s comment on ‘Jane’s’ ability to move in the setting constructed by Sirk, Khoo’s observation points to a relationship between the physical constraint of the performer’s surrounds and a focus on her bodily actions.34 Khoo’s comment can be extended to explain the way the physical

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 Langdon, ‘An Intimate IF Super-8’. 32 Kar-wai, ‘Tony Leung’ 198. 33 Olivia Khoo, ‘Love in Ruins: Spectral Bodies in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood Love’ in Fran Martin and Larissa Heinrich (Eds.), Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation, and Chinese Cultures (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006) 243. 34 Haralovich, ‘All That Heaven Allows’ 65.

210 constraint of cramped, narrow and otherwise small settings affects performance in In the Mood for Love. Like Cheung’s tight-fitting cheongsams, the absence of adequate space in the settings fosters a focus on the performer’s bodily response to these settings.35 In In the Mood for Love, as throughout Wong’s oeuvre, the physical navigation of tight spaces often focuses attention on the enactment of each bodily motion.

For instance, several scenes in which Cheung negotiates her very cramped office space in In the Mood for Love are representative of the way cluttered settings and tight-fitting costume ‘accentuate’ her bodily motions.36

Cheung’s restrained bodily motions in these scenes, as throughout the film, are careful, habitual and repetitive. In order to sit down at her small desk Cheung carefully and automatically squeezes herself between the desk and a shelf that sits very close behind it. Sliding sideways as she sits, once seated she pushes the chair backwards in order to squeeze her knees under the table. This she does several times throughout the film, always in a very similar way. Like many other moments throughout the film, the relationship between performing body and the physical constraint of setting is one of pressuring and foregrounding bodily motions in particular ways.

Another configuration of tight space and performing bodies that foregrounds the bodily aspects of performance in In the Mood for Love is the narrow hallway in the apartment building and the recurring actions that take place there.37 Wong makes heavy use of the narrow hallway of the apartment building throughout the film. Both Cheung and Leung Chiu-wai move especially !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 35 Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997) 43. 36 Khoo, ‘Love in Ruins’ 243. 37 Ackbar Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ in Jean-Marc Lalanne, David Martinez, Ackbar Abbas and Jimmy Ngai (Eds.), Wong Kar-wai (Paris: Dis Voir, 1997) 43.

~~211 carefully through this part of the building. Specifically, time and again Leung~~

Chiu-wai is shown turning his body and head sideways so as keep a reasonable distance between himself and the bodies of other residents while moving through the hallway. Time and again we are returned to this part of the building and to the transient, distanced and restrained motions that take place there. Like

~~Cheung’s bodily negotiation of the tight spaces of her office, this careful, repetitive bodily motion is accentuated by the very tight space in which he has to move.~~

Variations on this particular bodily action recur throughout the film. For example, in a continuous wide shot near the beginning of the film several of the apartment’s residents are viewed through a doorway playing mah-jong at a table.

At one point Leung Chiu-wai moves carefully past Cheung to leave the room. As he does so Cheung pushes herself up against the wall and Leung Chiu-wai turns his body to the side to move past without coming into contact. Like so many of the performers’ bodily motions, this emphasises the way the tight setting augments the physicality of performance. This is highlighted even further by the use of slow motion, which as Chow remarks ‘magnif[ies] the granularity of an otherwise automatized, because transitory set of motions.’38 The effect this creates is an emphasis on the surface textures of both bodily performance and the physical context in which it takes place, or the physical relationship between material elements in the frame.

~~Abbas’ concept of ‘proximity without reciprocity’ provides further understanding of the relationship between tight settings and the foregrounding of~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 647.~~

212 bodily aspects of performance in Wong’s films. 39 Here, as throughout the director’s oeuvre, the tightness of space sets up a contradiction between physical closeness and emotional distance. Though they share very constricted spaces, the characters in Wong’s films live very much in their own worlds. As Abbas explains:

The rapid, but also uneven, transformations of Hong Kong’s cultural space, a result of the push – and – pull politics, show themselves in these films symptomatically as spatial paradoxes and contradictions, or as the skewing of affective relations. Thus, one of Wong’s most constant themes, found in all his films in different modalities, is proximity without reciprocity; that is to say, how we can be physically close to a situation or to a person without there being any intimacy or knowledge.40

Abbas argues that this ‘proximity without reciprocity’ is one of Wong’s key themes.41 As Abbas notes, in relationships between Wong’s characters there is an absence of ‘intimacy or knowledge’.42 This lack of intimacy and knowledge not only translates to characters having little knowledge of each other, but also to the spectator having little intimacy with and knowledge of the characters.

This is enacted through opaque modes of performance that focus on the surface textures of bodily performance. This focus on external, outward features of performance includes their movements and gestures in space.

~~Applying Teo’s understanding of the sense of tactility produced by~~

~~‘hands stroking, squeezing and rubbing’ in Ashes of Time to In the Mood for~~

Love we find a similarly important relationship between bodily performance and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 39 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 43. 40 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 43. 41 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 43. 42 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 43.

213 the material qualities of setting that is about more than just foregrounding.43 In this film, the tightness of the performers’ physical surrounds are emphasised and augmented by the performers’ largely emotionally blank and automatic mode of performance – their affectless, careful, restrained and repetitive bodily motions.

~~The setting not only foregrounds the bodily motions of performers, but these bodily modes of performance also intermingle with setting in particular ways.~~

Throughout In the Mood for Love, Cheung and Leung Chui-wai negotiate the consistently tight surrounds through markedly restrained and repetitive bodily motions. Working in their offices, walking to the noodle stand, sitting in the restaurant booth, walking up and down the stairs and through the hallway of the apartment are all actions the characters do over and over again in the same or similar fashion. As they go about these daily tasks they often keep their arms close to their bodies and manoeuvre themselves so as not to take up too much of the already meagre space. In the small apartment rooms and hallways both

Cheung and Leung Chiu-wai are constantly trying to take up the least amount of space as possible while navigating the tight spaces and bodies of their fellow residents. The restrained mode of performance in In the Mood for Love forms part of a broader quality of control and constriction. This mode complements and conforms to the physical constraint of their material surroundings. Situating these performances within Wong’s broader oeuvre suggests that this restrained mode is not necessarily ‘dictate[d]’ by physical constriction but is instead one of the main responses to it.44

It is important to note here that while spatial constriction is a common attribute of Wong’s settings across his oeuvre, bodily performance varies from !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 43 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 79. 44 In ‘Love in Ruins’ Khoo argues that Cheung’s cheongsam dresses ‘dictate and create’ her ‘physical movements and performance’ (244).

214 restrained to histrionic. For instance, in Fallen Angels Kaneshiro’s performance is marked not by restraint but more often than not by large, unpredictable, theatrical motions and facial expressions. This suggests that in Wong’s films performing bodies respond to physical constraint in different ways. The two main modes of performance could then be understood to represent different responses to spatial constriction. In their shared focus on the bodiliness of performance, both histrionic and blank or restrained modes reflect not only the way constraint foregrounds bodily movement but represent differing ways in which bodily performance intermingles with setting. We can understand these different modes as both rebelling or resisting (histrionic mode) and conforming to (retrained mode) the physical constraints of space. Kaneshiro’s histrionic mode sets up an overt sense of conflict between body and space that manifests through erratic and larger than life movements. Conversely this struggle is quieted and contained in In the Mood for Love, through the restrained mode, characterised by the small, cautious gestures enacted by Cheung and Leung

~~Chiu-wai.~~

In the Mood for Love features two essentially physically and emotionally restrained performances. Time and again throughout the film the two main performers enact similar reserved bodily motions. Importantly, physical constriction brought about by setting (and costume) shapes and foregrounds the material textures of these bodily motions. In In the Mood for Love the restraint of bodily performance responds to and fortifies the material constraint of these settings. While it is important to understand the relationship between the tightness of physical surrounds and performing bodies, analysis of how they

~~215 ‘collide’ with an array of filmic elements is vital to an understanding of how they operate as spatially enmeshed filmic bodies.45~~

~~A Lesionistic and Haptic Spatial Code~~

~~In examining the key elements of Wong’s use of the cinematic apparatus to create a partial, tactile cinematic space we are returned once again to the work of~~

Sirk. At the beginning of his seminal article on melodrama, Thomas Elsaesser quotes Sirk, perhaps the most well-known director of film melodramas. In the quote Sirk explains how he used deep focus lenses in Written on the Wind (1956) to lend objects ‘a harshness’ and colours ‘a kind of enamelled, hard surface’.46

Sirk goes on to explain that in so doing he sought to ‘bring out the inner violence, the energy of the characters, which is all inside them and can’t break through.’ 47 The quote indicates the thrust of Elsaesser’s argument, that

Hollywood family melodramas made (roughly) between 1940 and 1963 cinematically evoke the weight of objects for dramatic purposes. As Elsaesser argues, in his melodramas Sirk manages to draw out the weight of the domestic space, with all its consumer trappings. Importantly, these consumer objects, as

Elsaesser puts it, ‘surround the heroine in a hierarchy of apparent order that becomes increasingly suffocating… [p]ressure is created by things crowding in on them.’48 In these films, the space of the home in particular becomes a tangible, restrictive, affective force where ‘ideologies and social pressures’ are

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 George Kouvaros interviewed by Needeya Islam, ‘The Cinematic Life of Emotions: John Cassavetes: George Kouvaros Interviewed’ Senses of Cinema 5 (April 2000), http://sensesofcinema.com/2000/feature-articles/emotions/. In which Kouvaros quotes Adrian Martin’s description of the work of Cassavetes. 46 Thomas Elsaesser, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama’ in Barry Keith Grant (Ed.), Film Genre Reader II (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995) 68-91. 47 Elsaesser, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’ 68. 48 Elsaesser, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’ 84.

~~216 made ‘concrete’.49 A similar kind of materialisation and ‘crowding in’ occurs in~~

~~In the Mood for Love.~~

While Wong does not use this deep-focus technique or domestic space in the same way as Sirk, in In the Mood for Love and indeed most of his films one way or another, there exists a similar sense of the weight of the material surrounds, whether ephemeral (smoke, rain, etc.) or static (walls, furniture, other objects), and the sense of these surrounds closing in is evoked. Unlike Sirk,

Wong does not present the weight of objects in a melodramatic way. He does not use objects to stand in for ‘the inner violence’ or ‘energy’ of the characters but rather he attends to their material textures to create haptic, tactile images, which create a disrupted, rather than linear, narrative.

~~This use of space departs from classical narrative space as outlined by~~

~~Stephen Heath.50 In Questions of Cinema, Heath devotes a chapter to the topic of~~

‘Narrative Space’. In this chapter Heath explains how space is constructed in classical narrative cinema and to what end. He argues that classical cinematic space is built around the notion of the ‘ideal picture of the scene’.51 Heath contends that the camera is positioned and the scene edited to capture the narrative action clearly and unobtrusively. Mary Beth Haralovich argues that

Sirk’s use of different colour schemes in each setting operate beyond the purview of what she similarly refers to as the ‘unobtrusive realism’ of classical narrative style.52 Likewise, the foregrounding of the material properties of setting and objects in both Sirk and Wong can be understood to break with the convention of presenting narrative action unobtrusively instead shifting the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 49 Haralovich, ‘All That Heaven Allows’ 61. 50 Stephen Heath, ‘Narrative Space’ in Questions of Cinema (London: Macmillan, 1981) 19-75. 51 Heath quotes Reisz and Millar in ‘Narrative Space’ 32. Taken from Karel Reisz & Gavin Millar, The Technique of Film Editing (New York and London: Hastings House, 1968) 215. 52 Haralovich, ‘All That Heaven Allows’ 63.

217 spectators’ attention to the surface qualities of these filmic objects. While Sirk’s films operate within the conventions of classical narrative space in most other aspects, Wong’s haptic style departs from these conventions in several significant ways to create what this thesis defines as a lesionistic and haptic

~~‘spatial code’.53~~

Operating outside of strict narrative concerns, Wong breaks with spatial continuity and linearity, instead creating a ‘spatial code’ based on incompleteness and tactility.54 In classical narrative space the method of shooting and editing is intent on clear spatial and temporal continuity and there is an avoidance of anything that might disorientate the spectator such as discontinuous editing or breaking with the 180 degree rule. All these elements work to create classical, continuous cinematic space. Breaking with all these conventions in one way or another Wong creates cinematic space that is discontinuous, partial, and focused on the sensuous surface of the image, that is, lesionistic and haptic. The fractured and tactile spatial configurations of his films affect filmic bodies in a number of ways vital to their affective potential for spectators. Conceiving of

Wong’s approach to cinematic space as operating within his broader lesionistic and haptic film style aids in delineating its role in the tactile appeal of his filmic bodies. Defining Wong’s approach to cinematic space as partial and tactile requires an examination of its main stylistic elements and their effects.

~~Obstructive Framing and Staging~~

~~Framing and staging that place objects between the performer and the camera are two of the ways Wong creates a tactile sense of performing bodies comingling~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 53 Branigan, ‘The Space of Equinox Flower’ 102. 54 Branigan, ‘The Space of Equinox Flower’ 102.~~

218 with space and of the setting crowding in. As was discussed in Chapter Two, in placing bits of the mise-en-scene between the performer and the camera Wong directs the spectators’ attention to the surface of the image. With this technique he creates partially obscured and highly tactile, that is, haptic, images of performance. Though this aspect of the director’s style has been discussed previously, it warrants close attention here as it relates directly to the material relationship Wong creates between performing bodies, setting and cinematic technique in his films, and the particularly claustrophobic feeling he creates with this in In the Mood for Love.

Wong’s obstructive staging breaks with the classical narrative convention of providing an ‘ideal’ or ‘unobtrusive’ ‘picture of the scene’.55 While his tendency to set his films in small and cluttered locations could be seen as part of the reason for this staging technique, close analysis of this aspect of his film style shows that he continually chooses to obstruct performing bodies in this way, regardless of the amount of space available in the location itself. This technique serves to emphasise the material characteristics of the tight physical surrounds and is crucial to producing the sense of his filmic bodies being indivisibly entwined in these surrounds. Through this mode of staging, the spectator’s engagement with this partial, abstracted filmic body is simultaneously an engagement with the materiality of the objects that surround and ‘crowd in on’ these performing bodies.56

In the Mood for Love features many excellent examples of this obstructive staging that illustrate its effect. In this film, sheer curtains, bars on windows and windowpanes continually obscure performing bodies (Figures 1, 2 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 55 Heath quotes Reisz and Millar in ‘Narrative Space’ 32. Haralovich, ‘All That Heaven Allows’ 61. 56 Elsaesser, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’ 84.

219 and 3). For instance, the sheer curtain blowing in the wind that alternately covers and reveals the beautiful Leslie Cheung in Ashes of Time, returns in In the Mood for Love, obscuring and exposing Leung Chiu-wai as he sits having dinner in a restaurant. Wong also repeatedly places the camera on the other side of a curtained window to capture Lai-chen in her office (Figure 1). These curtains encourage the spectator to engage with the image’s surface textures, in this case the partial, haptic image created by the combination of performer, curtain and film medium. Bodily performance and this object in the mise-en-scene become intertwined in and through the cinematic apparatus creating a filmic body that is a tactile, sensuous enmeshment of performance, setting and the film medium. In

~~In the Mood for Love, these obstructive curtains are just one of the many elements that materialise or make tangible the physically constraining relationship between performing bodies and setting.~~

~~Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.~~

~~Figure 1)~~

~~Another illustrative example of this obstructive staging in In the Mood for Love occurs in several similar shots that place bars between the camera and~~

220 the performers (Figure 2 for example). During Chow and Lai-chen’s leisurely walks through back alleys that presumably lie somewhere between the restaurant they frequent and their apartment building, Wong continually places bars between the camera and the performers. This device can be read as visually depicting the situation the characters find themselves in, each trapped in marriages that have not worked out the way they hoped in a very conservative social atmosphere. Like the curtains, these bars direct the spectators’ attention to the surface of the image. The use of this element in the mise-en-scene forms part of the continual emphasis on the material qualities of the locations in which the film takes place and a tangible sense of performing bodies being spatially hemmed in.

~~Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.~~

~~(Figure 2)~~

~~221~~

~~Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.~~

~~(Figure 3)~~

This obstructive staging in In the Mood for Love is also evident in the placement of windows between the camera and performer. For instance, in one shot Wong places Leung Chiu-wai in the bottom of the window with signage pushing down from above as he smokes a cigarette and stares blankly toward the camera in slow motion (Figure 3). Once again, this shot encourages the spectator to focus on the surface of the image, with the window acting as a medium through which the performer is viewed. The sense of enclosure is in this instance created by the largely clear window and augmented by the clutter of furniture and people in the background, seemingly surrounding Leung Chiu-wai on all sides. As examples in Chapter Two demonstrate, this use of windows to create obstructive staging recurs throughout Wong’s oeuvre. An example from Happy

~~Together illustrates an even more tactile use of windows to create an obstructed view of performing bodies in the director’s work.~~

~~In Happy Together, made after Fallen Angels and before In the Mood for~~

~~Love, Wong includes many views of performing bodies through dirty, cloudy~~

222 and otherwise obscured windows. For example, the view through the window at the Bar Sur, the tango bar where Lai Yiu-fai (Leung Chiu-wai) works as a doorman, with the bar’s name painted imposingly across it, recurs throughout the film. The performers are also viewed through the windows of the apartment the two men share, the small round window on the door to the kitchen of the restaurant where Lai works and the windows of another bar frequented by Lai and Chang (Chang Chen), a co-worker at the restaurant. None of these windows are crystal clear. They are either dirty, have some sort of signage written on them or they have reflections of light hitting them, all of which create highly obstructed views of the performers. Similar “cloudy” windows are used in much the same way in other Wong films. For instance, as noted in Chapter Two, in

Fallen Angels we see this in the form of rainy windows. By placing dirty and otherwise obstructed windows between performers and the camera, Wong emphasises the material texture of the performers’ physical surrounds and the spatial constriction that characterises these surrounds even more so than the largely transparent windows found in In the Mood for Love.

In In the Mood for Love, as in his other films, rain, steam and cigarette smoke serve a similar purpose to these curtains, bars and windows. The scene in which Chow and Lai-chen shelter together in the pouring rain is a good example of this with the rain acting as a kind of ephemeral wall or curtain. There are also several shots of Chow engulfed by at times heavy cigarette smoke while sitting at his desk. Through slow motion Wong transforms the smoke into a thick cloud that surrounds the performer. In this way he lends smoke a physical weight or density. Obscuring performing bodies, these elements have a heaviness, a materiality of their own. Much like aspects of the mise-en-scene such as curtain

223 and windows, rain and smoke contribute to a sense of these surrounds closing in on these performing bodies. Through such combinations filmic bodies are rendered as complex amalgams of bodily performance and these ephemeral but somehow filmically weighty, tactile phenomena. Shot size is equally important in creating this enmeshment of performer and setting.

~~Shot Size: ‘Fragments and Medium Shots’~~

There is a distinct lack of establishing shots and other familiar images of the city in In the Mood for Love, as in all Wong’s films. The establishing or ‘master- shot’ is usually a vital element of classical narrative space that typically sets up the spatial coordinates of a film.57 Wong refuses to orient his viewers by providing prefabricated representations of the city locations in which most of his films take place. Abbas contends that ‘films that use the city as mere setting

…close down the movement of cities and images by drawing on recognizable urban landmarks as stable points of reference’.58 Applying this to In the Mood for Love, we can see how Wong avoids prefabricated images or landmarks, instead choosing to set the film almost exclusively in the interiors of the nondescript apartment building, offices, a noodle stand, a restaurant, a hotel and back streets. Abbas argues that instead of providing easily identifiable establishing shots Wong’s films are made up exclusively of ‘fragments and medium shots’.59 The consistent use of close framing contributes to a sense of spatial partiality and disorientation, which also fosters the tactile appeal of the cinematic space created.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 57 Heath, ‘Narrative Space’ 41. 58 Abbas, ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’ 145. 59 Abbas, ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ 79.~~

~~224 In In the Mood for Love, as in most of Wong’s films, this close framing renders each location as self-contained and discontinuous. In In the Mood for~~

Love, cinematic space is made up of a series of filmically fragmented interiors and interiorised exterior spaces. Rather than the unambiguous, continuous, narrative-driven space of classical film style, Wong’s spatial code is constructed around a somewhat discontinuous interlinking of self-contained interior or interiorised spaces that prompt the spectator to participate in connecting them. In the Mood for Love is the clearest example of this tendency in his oeuvre.

Importantly, this interlinking of partial, discontinuous spaces is often centred on filmic bodies. Hemingway’s comment on the persistent tightness of the spaces traversed by these performing bodies suggests that consistently tight framing encourages spectators to make connections between these partial spaces, constructing a form of consistent enclosure centred on filmic bodies.60 These connections involve an active, bodily engagement with these disparate cinematic spaces.

! Wong’s use of tight framing has the similar effect of producing a sense of spatial disorientation and fracture within individual locations and scenes. As was discussed in Chapter Two, Wong often uses close shots of performing bodies to emphasise their surface textures. This close framing also disallows a clear view of the spatial relationship between these bodies and their surrounds that would be provided by a wider shot. For instance, in In the Mood for Love a close shot of

Cheung’s torso and legs as she walks in flowing slow motion to the noodle stand precludes any orientation in the space she traverses, instead serving to create a broader sense of spatial disorientation and fracture. Wong also frequently frames

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 60 Hemingway, ‘Space’.~~

225 single objects in close-up, such as telephones and clocks. These close shots not only emphasise the material weight of objects in the settings, they also serve to fracture the spatial configuration of single scenes and locations. Like spatial discontinuity between locales this fragmentation encourages a mode of spectatorship that is personal, bodily and active in drawing together the part- objects of bodies and spaces. !

~~! ! Vertical Pressure~~

The use of parts of the mise-en-scene to enframe performing bodies within the setting is another important way Wong emphasises the shared materiality of performers and setting in In the Mood for Love, as throughout his oeuvre.

Though keeping narrative action within the frame is not always prioritised in his films, this framing technique does sometimes delimit very tight spaces within which performers can enact bodily motions for the camera in In the Mood for

Love. It also contributes to an emphasis on the material textures, most especially the physical tightness, of these settings. The shot described at the start of this chapter is a good example of this. An examination of this element of Wong’s framing reveals this as a key difference between the use of the domestic space in

~~Sirk’s 1950s family melodramas and his work.~~

In Sirk’s melodramas the “pressure” issued by the space is consistently arranged horizontally, specifically moving downward from above. In these films the camera is often placed at a low angle so as to give the impression of the architecture looming over the characters or a high angle to emphasise the cluttered quality of the domestic space (see Figures 4 and 5).61 While we have seen that Wong does make use of horizontal pressure (Figure 3), vertical

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 61 Thanks to Jodi Brooks for pointing this out.~~

~~226 pressure, that is a sense of pressure pushing inward from left and right of the screen, is far more prevalent in In the Mood for Love and indeed all his work.62~~

~~Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.~~

~~Figure 4 Written on the Wind)~~

~~Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.~~

~~(Figure 5 Imitation of Life, 1959)~~

The best examples of vertical pressure in In the Mood for Love are shots of characters framed through windows and doorways (Figures 6, 7 and 8). These kinds of shots are repeated and varied throughout the film. The performer is

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 62 Horizontal pressure can also be found in form of the low ceiling in the final scene in Days of Being Wild.~~

227 typically placed on the opposite side of a doorway and the camera placed at a distance, which allows the doorway to frame the scene in the adjoining room. In these shots, as in many others in the film, the camera sits at a level angle at about waist height. Again and again in In the Mood for Love Wong places the camera at a distance from performing bodies to emphasise hallways, wall and doorways on either side of the performers, as in the opening description (Figure 8), to create a sense of the vertical constriction of the setting pushing in on performing bodies from either side. These shots continually emphasise the material textures of the walls, doorways and window frames that contain and confine the performing bodies. This framing is key to constructing filmic bodies that are inextricably and tangibly linked to the spatial confinement that characterises the cinematic space created in this film. The unusually low position combined with the level angle of the camera frequently aids in creating the sense of vertical pressure as the top of the doorframe often falls out of the shot (as in Figures 6 and 8).

~~Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.~~

~~(Figure 6)~~

~~228~~

~~Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.~~

~~(Figure 7)~~

~~Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.~~

~~(Figure 8)~~

~~Camera Height and Angle: Abstraction and Constriction~~

These lower shots also represent another example of the way in which Wong’s film style tends toward ‘inflation’ or the foregrounding of cinematic codes, breaks with the ‘unobtrusive’ ‘picture of the scene’ demanded by classical narrative space and encourages the spectator to attend to the surface of the

~~229 image. 63 This, like many of Wong’s other stylistic choices, serves to~~

~~‘defamiliarise’ these everyday spaces.64 This abstraction of the everyday through camera height is just one of the devices Wong uses to draw attention to the~~

~~‘texture’ of the setting itself or rather these haptic, abstract and partial images of space.65~~

Framing that shoots performing bodies up against walls also emphasises the materiality of the setting and the quality of spatial constriction. Abbas discusses this aspect of Wong’s framing as part of his tendency to ‘interiorize’ exterior locations.66 Tight framing and camera angles that capture only the performer or part of the performer and the wall behind present only a small fragment of the location. Wong uses this mode of framing heavily in exterior scenes in In the Mood for Love, continually interiorising exterior settings. For example, in the sequences featuring Lai-chen and Chow visiting the noodle stand both performers are consistently shot against the exterior wall, enclosing the exterior space of the street. For instance, in the medium close-up travelling shots featuring Cheung’s torso as she walks, the performer’s body is always shot against the wall, interiorising this exterior setting via framing. Wong uses this mode of framing once again in the scenes of the two leads conversing while walking in the street together. Instead of framing the performers from an angle where the open space may be viewed, Wong frames the characters against the walls. This framing creates the impression of the performing body being pressed between the camera, and the setting, contributing to the overall claustrophobic

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 63 Stern, ‘Putting on a Show’. Heath quotes Reisz and Millar in ‘Narrative Space’ 32. Haralovich, ‘All That Heaven Allows’ 61. 64 Chow, ‘Sentimental Returns’ 647. 65 Teo, Wong Kar-wai 79. 66 Abbas, ‘Cinema, The City, and The Cinematic’ 153.

~~230 feel of the film. This fractured framing once again emphasises the materiality of the cinematic space created through its extreme partiality.~~

~~Editing: Discontinuity, Disorientation and ‘Dead Space’~~

As has been discussed in the previous chapter, Wong sometimes avoids the use of a shot-reverse-shot editing pattern in scenes of conversation, instead restricting our view of the conversation to one performer (Figures 9 and 10).

According to Heath, the character-look ‘has been fundamental for the welding of a spatial unity of narrative implication’ in the production of classical narrative space.67 In the classical construction of cinematic space, the look of the character

~~(the character looking at something or someone) is usually matched by another shot of what is being looked at. Wong breaks with this convention in important ways, fracturing linear space.~~

In one instance of this in In the Mood for Love Wong breaks the 180 degree rule with a frontal shot of Lai-chen while she converses with the unseen wife of Chow (Figure 10). The camera stands in the position of the unseen wife creating the impression of Lai-chen as an object of study instead of being sutured into the narrative flow. This also frames her against the wall behind, creating a sense of her being wedged between the camera/Chow’s wife and the wall of the apartment. This is compounded by Cheung’s stiff delivery and her largely motionlessness body throughout the scene. The lack of alternating shots works to create a sense of discontinuity and disconnection in that we do not see what the character is looking at. The staging of the shot so that the two participants stand on either side of the doorframe disallows a conventional profile two-shot. Wong

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 67 Heath, ‘Narrative Space’ 44.~~

231 also avoids over the shoulder shots, which would reveal the second person in the conversation and work to give sense of their spatial relation to one another. The lack of a reverse shot in these scenes not only focuses our attention on the performer but on the surface of the image. In breaking with the convention that constructs space around narrative action this serves to create cinematic space that is partial, incomplete and hence is designed to shift the spectator’s attention to the surface of these strongly spatially determined filmic bodies.

~~Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.~~

~~(Figure 9: One-sided conversation diagonal)~~

~~232~~

~~Figure has been removed due to Copyright restrictions.~~

~~(Figure 10: One-sided conversation front on)~~

The kinds of ‘character-look’ shots that are typically used in the classical narrative approach to space to create narrative and spatial coherence between shots are for the most part avoided in Wong’s films. Instead there is a distinct lack of shots of characters looking edited together with what they are looking at

(though they occur now and then). Chapter Two provides an example of this in the sequence from Fallen Angels involving the agent and the assassin walking through the barbershop. In this sequence, one character’s glance off-screen is cut together with what may be the other character’s point of view. Wong then cuts to this second character walking away rather than looking in the direction of the eyeline match shot. The false eyeline match set up in these three shots creates highly fractured spatial relations between one shot and the next.

~~Similarly, Wong’s breaking with the shot-reverse-shot pattern in In the~~

~~Mood for Love feeds back into a broader sense of disorientation and constriction.~~

The failure to open up the spectators’ view of the space through a wider two-shot or reverse shot contributes to a sense of spatial disorientation. It also emphasises the constrictive, fixed quality of the setting by literally limiting our view of the

~~233 surrounds. Moreover, in disallowing a view of the other person in the conversation, Wong causes a rupture in the linear flow, focusing our attention on the tactile surface of the image.~~

The use of ‘dead space’ before, after and even standing in for narrative action is another important stylistic device related to editing that creates fractures in linear narrative, foregrounding the materiality of space over narrative action.

~~Speaking of Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love, Wong himself says~~

~~‘sometimes [I] treat space as the main character in my films…[t]hey are the silent witness to the whole story.’68 Wong’s use of setting in In the Mood for~~

Love in particular recalls the way Michelangelo Antonioni used shots of empty space, before, after and in place of, narrative action. The most famous example of this in Antonioni’s oeuvre is the final sequence in L’Eclisse (1962). The sequence is made up of shots of the street where the lovers once met, with the noticeable absence of the lovers themselves. These shots stand in place of shots of narrative action explaining why the lovers have not arrived.

Throughout In the Mood for Love Wong holds shots of empty space before and after performing bodies pass through them. The best example of his use of ‘dead space’ in In the Mood for Love occurs near the end of the film. It is several years after the main story of the film and Lai-chen has moved back into the apartment building with her toddler son. Chow comes to visit his old landlords only to find that they have moved out. The same shot setups are used as in the earlier scenes in the film depicting the length of the apartment hallway, emphasising its narrowness. As he is leaving Chow turns to look at the door of his former next-door neighbour and pauses. A few moments later this same shot

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 68 Leslie Camhi, ‘Setting His Tale of Love Found in a City Long Lost’ New York Times (January 28, 2001) 26.~~

234 is repeated except this time it is empty. This shot of the empty hallway with a view to the stairs recalls previous actions that occurred within this space. This empty shot causes a disruption in the linear flow of the narrative, not only for its pausing of narrative movement but its ability to resonate with so many earlier images. It also emphasises the material texture of the setting itself by focusing the spectator’s attention on it. Similar to Wong’s close-ups of objects in the mise-en-scene devoid of narrative content, his use of shots of empty space lend an important material weight to the performers’ surrounds, once again highlighting their shared materiality.

~~As opposed to avoiding spatial discontinuity and ambiguity in editing,~~

Wong embraces it.69 Although with In the Mood for Love he for the most part dispenses with fast cutting that creates slight discontinuities of gesture between one shot and the next, he still manages to create fractures in spatial continuity through editing.70 As happens through Wong’s oeuvre, in In the Mood for Love spatial discontinuity occurs from one shot to the next creating spatial disorientation within scenes and settings. Instead of an easy connection between one shot and the next motivated by character or story, edits are often discontinuous and disorientating. Discontinuity between one shot and another, breaking with the 180 degree rule and the use of ‘dead space’ in place of narrative actions are all key to his cinematic space. This use of editing calls attention to the film medium itself, focusing the spectator’s attention on the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 69 Abbas, Culture and the Politics of Disappearance and ‘The Erotics of Disappointment’ and ‘Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic’. 70 Lai-chen’s arrival at the hotel where she has arranged to meet Chow stands out as one of the only examples of this fast-cutting editing style in In the Mood for Love. Her hesitant movements toward the room are disjointed by editing that rupture continuity by placing shots out of chronological order and inserts slight repetitions of shots.

~~235 film’s discontinuous surface. This fragmentary use of editing is vital to tactile and constricted cinematic space.~~

Wong’s lesionistic and haptic spatial code creates cinematic space that is partial, incomplete and tactile. The spatial code continually emphasises the material texture of settings and objects. In emphasising the walls, doorways, partitions and other objects he creates a strong sense of enmeshment of performing bodies in their physical surrounds. Importantly, Wong also constructs each of these closed in settings as self-contained, producing ambiguous spatial relations between one location and another. Ambiguous spatial relations and disorientation in space suffuse his films with immediacy and encourage spectators to engage by connecting these disparate bits of cinematic space and filmic bodies. Like fractured filmic gestures, these discontinuous, incomplete images of space encourage spectators to make connections between one fragment of space and another. Hemingway’s ‘travelling the corridors’ comment points to the way spectators connect these disparate spaces to form a sense of enclosure around these filmic bodies.71 It is useful for understanding the relationship between segmented or self-contained space and performance in

Wong’s work as a whole and In the Mood for Love in particular. Importantly, this relies on the repetition of several elements to create a strong sense of spatial constriction. In In the Mood for Love, repetition is a vital element of the relationship between filmic bodies and cinematic space.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 71 Hemingway, ‘Space’.~~

~~236 Repetition, Resonance and Constriction~~

Though Wong’s use of staging, framing and editing to emphasise the material textures of the physical surrounds is important, the repetition of these elements in concert with recurring settings and gestures is vital in intensifying the palpable feeling of spatial constriction focused on these filmic bodies in In the Mood for

Love. Though examples of this can be found throughout his oeuvre, In the Mood for Love is the film that most clearly demonstrates this aspect of his work. In In the Mood for Love, repetition builds a tangible sense of spatial constriction centred on the filmic bodies of Cheung and Leung Chui-wai.

Analysis of repetitious scenes and gestures in Chapter Two suggests the importance of repetitious space in the ability of gestures to resonate. For example, in the two sequences from Fallen Angels described at the beginning of that chapter the repetition of the setting, the route taken, bodily motions, shot setups, camera movement and editing all work together to create gestural resonance between the two filmic bodies. This, and other examples indicate that the ability of gestures to recall and resonate with one another in Wong’s films is often reliant on the repetition of amalgams of setting, bodily performance and the cinematic approach.

In the Mood for Love, more than any of Wong’s other films, is built around spatial and gestural repetitions. The director continually returns us to either similar or the same shots of locations. Wong says of his repeated use of the same and similar shot setups in In the Mood for Love:

my purpose at first was to make the film very repetitious – we repeat the theme music all the time, we repeat the angle of a shot all the time, always the clock, always the corridor, always the staircase, because I

~~237 wanted to show that nothing changes except the emotions of these two people. So we tried to show the changes through them. 72~~

As Wong explains, repetitions mark small changes at the same time as highlighting the unceasing nature of the restrictive spaces they inhabit. These repetitive settings and shot setups are often paired with variations on similar or the same bodily motions. The repeated bodily motion of turning sidewards to avoid physical contact, while moving through the apartment hall and doorways is a good example of this. In similar shot setups again and again we view these restrained, repetitive, habitual actions. This sideways bodily motion returns again in the similarly cramped stairwell of the noodle stand, shot to emphasise the similar vertical pressure that is enacted in the apartment. This relationship between space and gesture recalls Gilles Deleuze’s discussion of Robert

~~Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959).~~

~~Describing a sequence from Pickpocket Deleuze notes the way gesture operates as a connective force across fragmented space saying that:~~

Bresson’s visual space is fragmented and disconnected, but its parts have, step by step, a manual continuity. The hand, then, takes on a role in the image which goes infinitely beyond the sensory-motor demands of the action, which take the place of the face itself for the purpose of affects, and which, in the area of perception, becomes the mode of construction of a space which is adequate to the decisions of the spirit. Thus, in Pickpocket, it is the hands of the three accomplices which connect the parts in the Gare de Lyon, not exactly through their seizing an object, but through brushing it, arresting it in its movement, giving it another direction, passing it on and making it circulate in this space. The hand doubles its prehensile function (of object) by

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 72 Liza Bear, ‘Wong Kar-wai’ Bomb 75 (Spring, 2001) 48-52.~~

238 connective function (of space); but, from that moment, it is the whole eye which doubles its optical function by a specifically ‘grabbing’ [haptique] one…for indicating a touching which is specific to the gaze.73

~~Deleuze articulates an important relationship between gesture and space in~~

Bresson’s work. Here he argues that gesture sets up its own form of continuity across ‘fragmented and disconnected’ space in this sequence from Bresson’s film.74 He also argues that the hand has a particular power in film performance, even more so when isolated filmically, to engage the spectator’s tactile sense of vision. Deleuze’s conception of a connective gesture can be fruitfully applied to the effect of spatial and gestural repetition in Wong’s work. In Wong’s films the repetition of performers, settings, scenes, gestures and cinematic techniques encourage similar sorts of connections across disparate images both within and between his films.

Like Deleuze, this chapter posits how spatial connections work in combination with gestural ones. Employing the notion that incompleteness leads to an openness that supports these connections, this thesis imagines an active, embodied spectator that participates in connecting disparate configurations of gesture, setting and cinematic approach in Wong’s films. Deleuze’s description also resonates with the description of the clicking of Reis’ high-heeled step in the sequence from Fallen Angels described at the beginning of Chapter Two.

Just as Deleuze notes the way the similar gesture of a hand in Pickpocket connects the ‘fragmented and disconnected’ cinematic space in Bresson’s film through a kind of ‘manual continuity’, so too does the nature of the recurring !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 73 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image [Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta], (London: The Athlone Press, 1989) 12-13. 74 Deleuze, The Time-Image 12.

239 sidewards bodily motions and along with several other repeated and varied actions in In the Mood for Love play a role in connecting Wong’s fractured space, discontinuous space. 75 In order to understand how these repetitions produce a palpable feeling of constriction we need to turn once more to Stern’s understanding of how gestures resonate and Tong’s conception of how repetitions cause fracture.

Stern’s understanding of how gestures resonate with or ghost one another can be expanded upon to examine the importance of Wong’s repetitious use of space for film performance. As Stern contends, through repetition a bodily action can ‘come…into focus…as a gesture’, that is as a physical or material event for the spectator.76 In a similar way, Wong’s perpetual returning to the same shot setups and similar or the same sets of bodily motions allows the physical properties of the settings to ‘come into focus’. Or rather, their material, tactile qualities are foregrounded and emphasised for the spectator. Tong and Martin both understand this ghosting as having a fracturing effect on linear narrative.77

~~Tong theorises this most clearly as a form of layering. This idea of layering, ghosting or resonance is key to understanding how spatial repetition affects~~

Wong’s filmic bodies. Similar to Deleuze’s understanding of the way gesture connects fragmented space in Pickpocket, Stern and Tong suggest that repetition fosters the potential for spectators to connect disparate configurations of gesture and space. Like the repetition of gestures, and often in concert with them, the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 75 Deleuze, The Time-Image 12. 76 Lesley Stern, ‘Ghosting: The Performance and Migration of Cinematic Gesture, Focusing on Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Good Men, Good Women’ in Carrie Noland and Sally Anne Ness (Eds.), Migrations of Gesture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) 203. 77 Janice Tong, ‘Chungking Express: Time and its Displacements’ in Chris Berry (Ed.), Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (London: British Film Institute, 2003) 47-55. Martin, ‘Perhaps’.

~~240 director’s disparate and repetitious construction of closed in space can accumulate and resonate for the active, embodied spectator.~~

This sense of accumulation and resonance is illustrated in a series of scenes in In the Mood for Love in which the two main characters walk and talk together in a narrow back street. Each of these scenes in the street unfold through a set of similar medium wide, mid and medium close-up shots of characters against the walls and through the bars on a window (see Figure 2). The first instance of this scene is cut together almost imperceptibly with the second. This change from one instance of a similar scene to another, one night to another, is perceptible only through a change in costume. The repeated shot setups

‘interiorise’ the setting and emphasise its physical constraint. Paired with similar and the same bodily motions, such as walking leisurely, leaning against the exterior walls or turning their bodies toward or away from one another as they converse, this creates a strong sense of resonance with the similar scenes that have come before. As the relationship between the two characters develops, these repeated configurations build upon one another contributing to a palpable sense of spatial entrapment. In the Mood for Love is largely made up of several sets of these repetitious scenes. Like this example, they use repetition to build a sense of spatial constriction around performing bodies.

Another illustrative example is three very similar scenes involving Lai- chen and Chow having dinner in the same restaurant. In these scenes Wong creates a strong sense of repetition through setting, shot setups, costume and bodily performance. In his audio commentary for a DVD version of Jean-Luc

~~Godard’s Masculin Féminin (1966) Martin discusses how Godard uses the same locations over and over but shoots them slightly differently from scene to scene~~

241 to gradually reveal more and more of the space.78 In these dinner scenes, Wong too varies his shots slightly from one scene to another. Importantly, he differs from Godard in that he does not use these variations to show more of the space but instead keeps the spectator’s view very restricted through tight framing and only slight variation.

In the first dinner scene the characters are shot in profile in a series of close-ups of each of the characters’ heads. This set up has the effect of creating spatial ambiguity and isolating each character. Near the end of the conversation, when Lai-chen asks Chow where he bought his tie, there are a couple of quick pans right to Chow then left back to Lai-chen bringing the two spatially together in the same shot as they move toward their mutual realisation about the affair. In the second dinner scene the two characters are brought a little closer together by framing them in a couple of two-shots, one an over the shoulder shot of Chow and then another two-shot in profile. Close-ups of each of the characters’ plates follow these opening shots as they eat, achieved by tracking to the left then the right of the table in profile. Wong cuts to another left panning shot, then another profile medium close-up of Lai-chen carefully bringing a piece of food to her mouth with only her similar but different dress indicating that this is a different evening. There is a subtle sound bridge between these two scenes through the sound of utensils on the plate that connects them. Once again the scene is made up of profile and over the shoulder shots of the two eating though it is the latter that dominates. The change from individual shots in the earlier scene to shots that include both of them emphasises their growing closeness.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 78 Audio commentary by Adrian Martin on 2006 DVD release of Masculin Féminin (1966) by Madman Entertainment, Melbourne, Australia.~~

242 Though Wong employs slight variations in how these scenes are shot, he maintains a very limited view of the setting. For instance, in each scene the characters sit in the same part of the restaurant – the booth seating. However, because of the lack of wide establishing shots it is difficult to decipher if they sit in the same booth every time they have dinner together or different booths that look exactly the same. Further, our view of the restaurant setting is very partial in that we really only view the small area occupied by the two characters. This spatial ambiguity is indicative of Wong’s approach as a whole. Spatial fragmentation and the repetition of setting, shots and bodily performance work together in these scenes, as they do throughout this film, to create a sense of confinement attached to these filmic bodies. As in many other “sets” of scenes in the film, the repetition of setting, shots and bodily movement depicts an entrapment in everyday routine.

~~For instance, In the Mood for Love features three very similar scenes of~~

Lai-chen and Chow visiting a noodle stand. The same small fraction of the setting is shown through the same tracking shot and the same and very similar sequence of bodily motions. All of the scenes take place under cover of night augmenting the way framing interiorises this external setting. In all three renderings of the scene, their repetitive motions are framed up against the exterior wall then vertically framed by the doorway to the noodle stand. In the first rendition of the scene the two characters miss each other. The second time they pass each other on the stairs. The third time they pass each other on the stairs again and momentarily acknowledge each other. All the versions of the sequence unfold in slow motion defamiliarising and accentuating these everyday motions.

~~243 The first iteration of the scene begins with a medium close-up of~~

~~Cheung’s lower torso and thighs, framed on a diagonal against the exterior wall.~~

In slow motion she walks down the street, the noodle container in her right hand swinging with her regular, rhythmic movement. In the first instance, as she effortlessly descends the stairs of the noodle stand the frame moves slightly upward. There is a cut to a slightly reframed continuation of her descent as the frame slowly moves down on a left diagonal to track her movement as she disappears down the stairs. After collecting her noodles, Cheung unhurriedly ascends the stairs. The shot setup capturing her descent is repeated but varied in that the camera tracks from right to left rather than left to right, reversing the previous shot but still recalling it. After Cheung walks out of the frame, Wong holds the static empty shot of the wall, doorway and street lamp. Leung Chiu- wai then walks into the shot and descends the stairs in a slightly skipping fashion that is slowed down by the cinematic apparatus, as the camera repeats the tracking motion used on Cheung.

~~The second instance of the scene begins as at regular film speed Cheung ascends the stairs after collecting her noodles, shot from the bottom of the stairs.~~

~~This instance of the scene opens with a similar medium close-up shot of~~

Cheung’s lower body, this time from behind so that we see her buttocks, thighs, hand and noodle container. The frame moves upward to capture Chow descending the stairs coming toward Lai-chen. The two meet on the stairs acknowledging each other and turning their bodies to the side to allow each other to pass. Turning her body away from Leung Chiu-wai, Cheung pushes herself up against the wall resting her hand gently upon it to support herself. The meeting is

~~244 made all the more fortuitous by their having missed each other the first time around in a similar set up of shots and movements.~~

Later in the film the same shot that opens the first instance of this scene returns. In an almost exact duplication of the earlier shot, Cheung’s lower torso and thighs are framed against the wall as she walks in slow motion. Once again the camera tracks her movement toward and down the stairs. This time Leung

Chiu-wai ascends the stairs as Cheung descends, repeating but varying the earlier bodily motions. Again Wong holds the empty shot after Leung Chiu-wai exits and again Leung Chiu-wai enters the empty shot to seek shelter when it begins to rain. This repetition of setting, bodily action and camera creates a strong sense of resonance with the previous version of the scene. Importantly, this resonation is also a building of a tangible sense of spatial constriction surrounding these filmic bodies.

Unlike classical constructions of cinematic space, Wong’s ‘spatial code’ engages the spectator in a process of creating the space by actively making connections between these tactile, disparate, repetitive fragments. Like the repetitions of the fragmentary filmic gestures discussed previously, the ghosting or layering effect of these repetitions has the potential to engage spectators in a process of accumulation. In In the Mood for Love, by building nearly the entire film from a series of repetitions Wong creates the potential for the spectator to experience a tangible sense of spatial constriction focused around his filmic bodies. Returning to Hemingway’s notion of ‘traveling the corridors’ we can now see how this is achieved through repetition.79 Importantly, the fragmentary

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 79 Hemingway, ‘Space’.~~

~~245 nature of Wong’s project encourages spatial connections to also be formed from one film to another.~~

Time and again Wong returns to us the same and similar combinations of setting, bodily performance and cinematic technique. Though these repetitive configurations occur between many of Wong’s films, the repetitions between In the Mood for Love and 2046 are the clearest examples. As discussed briefly in

Chapter Two, in 2046 the director repeats whole configurations of setting, bodily action, shot setup and camera movement from In the Mood for Love. As mentioned, in 2046 Lai-chen’s visits to the noodle stand in In the Mood for Love are recalled in a shot depicting another So Lai-chen (Gong Li) striding down the street. The shots and movements are almost identical from one film to the other.

Both are medium close-ups of a woman wearing a cheongsam shot up against an exterior wall in profile as she walks purposefully and elegantly in slow motion down the street. Each shot recalls the other creating a temporal rupture. It is the material configuration of setting, body and camera that connects these two disparate shots. The setting, the performing body and the cinematic configuration of space are all essential to the potential of shots to resonate affectively with one another for the spectator.

~~The cramped hallways and rooms of the apartment in In the Mood for~~

Love return in 2046 in the form of the “Oriental Hotel”, the main location of the film. Once again, Wong consistently emphasises the closeness of the space by allowing doorways and walls to intrude upon and obscure the performers. For instance, he again uses framing that allows walls to take up most of the image and the performer is squashed to the side. He also uses archways to obscure

~~246 characters, so that they have to bend and move themselves to negotiate each other’s bodies.~~

One of the most evocative moments in 2046 is merely a shot of empty space. This is a simple medium shot of a backstreet. The camera pans from right to left showing us a setting that looks just like the one frequented by Leung

~~Chiu-wai/Chow and Cheung/Lai-chen in In the Mood for Love. Though this shot is brief, lasting just a few seconds, it is ghosted by many moments from In the~~

Mood for Love through its resonant spatial relationship. More specifically, it recalls the spatially constricted bodies that lingered in this space before through their absence. This suggests that in Wong’s films, even in the absence of the body itself, performing bodies and space are inextricably linked.

Repetition is fundamental to the way Wong creates a palpable feeling of spatial constraint centred on his filmic bodies. Wong repeats and varies configurations of setting, bodily performance and elements of his lesionistic and haptic spatial code to create film images that are strongly palimpsestic. Similar to

Deleuze’s description of the connective power of gesture in Pickpocket, through repetition, Wong capitalises on the openness and tactility of his images to encourage a form of engagement with his spatially intertwined filmic bodies that is both active and bodily.

~~Conclusions~~

~~Space represents a key element of Wong’s partial, tactile, resonant filmic bodies.~~

The consistent use of everyday settings is an important part of the director’s unique intermingling of the familiar and the abstract. Often setting his films in everyday locales coupled with everyday gestures the director uses the film

247 medium to defamiliarise the ordinary to create images that appeal bodily to the spectator. His use of tight, cramped and cluttered settings foregrounds the bodily aspects of performance. However, the bodiliness of these performances in themselves can also be seen to augment the texture of constriction in these settings. His use of staging, framing and editing creates a spatial code that is lesionistic and haptic. This code emphasises the materiality of objects and settings, contributing to a sense of things closing in on these filmic bodies. The tactile and incomplete nature of Wong’s cinematic space encourages spectators to form connections between one space and another, or rather one configuration of setting, bodily performance and cinematic technique and another. Through the repetition of combinations of setting, bodily performance and cinematic techniques, each of these part-objects builds into a palpable, somatic sense of enclosure focused on filmic bodies.

Once again, this assessment of Wong’s filmic bodies offers insight into both performance as an important aspect of the director’s stylistics and film performance more broadly. It points to the tactility, openness and resonance at the heart of Wong’s film style. Like his filmic bodies as a whole, these spatial configurations demonstrate his broader tendency to create images that are incomplete, tactile part-objects. Wong uses the film medium to break up space into bits and pieces. Departing from classical continuity the director brings these fragments together in ways that create cinematic space that is discontinuous and incomplete. These fragmented amalgams encourage spectators to make tactile, bodily connections both within and between his films. In elucidating the important relationship between performance, setting, and the construction of cinematic space in Wong’s films it also suggests the importance of this

248 relationship for film performance in general. By attending to these elements separately as well as in specific combinations it suggests a way to approach film performance as a comingling of the performing body, the other material elements in the mise-en-scene, and the cinematic apparatus. In doing so it posits a way of understanding moving bodies on screen and how they are able to move the spectator.

~~249~~

~~CONCLUSION Film Performance as Affective Intertext~~

250 Throughout this thesis, the concept of the filmic body acts as a point of connection drawing together performance, film style and spectatorship. This thesis has shown that in its focus on the film’s material surface, the notion of the filmic body functions as a useful tool to expand understandings of film performance in Wong Kar-wai’s work outside the parameters of representation.

It has been argued that the concept of the filmic body provides a way to approach performance as an important feature of Wong’s film style and a way to understand how combinations of stylistic elements foster spectatorial bodily engagements with film performance in his work. This approach has allowed for points of stylistic comparison with film performance in the work of particular directors and broader stylistic traditions. Each of the chapters in this thesis has illustrated a vital aspect of Wong’s unique fragmentary approach to creating filmic bodies. Through close analysis of performance together with a range of other stylistic elements, each chapter has attempted to show how each specific aspect encourages particular kinds of bodily relations to his filmic bodies.

Fundamentally, the thesis provides an understanding of the importance of stylistic connection in Wong’s filmic bodies, where certain prevailing qualities continue and vary throughout the director’s work.

One of the key outcomes of the research presented in this thesis is to show that film performance in Wong’s work operates beyond the strictures of representation. Actors in his films do not exist only as agents of narrative, but as physical, rhythmic, textured, lively objects caught up with a range of stylistic devices that abstract, manipulate, distort, defamiliarise, foreground, dismember, and otherwise cinematically alter them.1 As Josette Feral explains, this process of

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 James Naremore, Acting in the Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 2.~~

~~251 fragmentation does not ‘negate’ the body but rather ‘bring[s] it back to life’.2~~

~~Wong’s filmic bodies, like the kinds of performance described by Feral, are vital and affective for spectators in their incompleteness and openness to connection with each other.~~

Chapter Two established the core proposition of the thesis, that Wong’s filmic bodies are partial, tactile, resonant, broadly fragmented entities. Initiated through the consideration of critical literature on the director in Chapter One, close analysis of Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1995) in Chapter

Two established fragmentation as the central, recurring aesthetic trait of Wong’s film style. The chapter argued that repetition, opaque and bodily modes of performance, and several specific aspects of the director’s use of the cinematic apparatus all have important fragmentary effects on his filmic bodies. Bringing this together with performance theory and theories of cinematic materiality, the chapter sought to classify these fragmented filmic bodies as open, tactile and resonant material events. The chapter then argued that these fragmented filmic bodies foster a mode of spectatorship that is both active and bodily, encouraging spectators to form connections between disparate images of performance both within and between Wong’s films.

Through its focus on the surface elements of the fragmentary film style that makes up Wong’s filmic bodies, Chapter Two provides an understanding of the role of his fragmentary aesthetic in the affective potential of film performance in his work as well as suggesting the importance of fragmentation in the affective potential of film performance more broadly. By focusing on the

~~‘lesionistic’ propensity of the cinematic apparatus, that is, its tendency to render~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 Josette Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality: The Subject Demystified’ [Translated by Terese Lyons] Modern Drama 25:1 (Spring, 1982) 172.

252 performing bodies as part-objects, and bringing this together with Marks’ theorisation of haptic cinema, the chapter proposes a model for understanding how Wong’s fragmentary film style invites spectators to engage in active, personal, bodily ways with these ‘human bodies…within the cinematic frame’.3

Identifying and analysing a range of stylistic techniques through which Wong creates filmic bodies that are partial and incomplete, this chapter gives insight into the importance of incompleteness and partiality in creating film performances that have affective appeal for spectators.

Chapter Three developed this understanding of the nature and effects of fragmentation in Wong’s filmic bodies further by concentrating on fractured tempo and temporality in his work. It analysed Ashes of Time (1994) as the most potent example of this aspect of his style. It established how the tempo of the filmic body is determined by many different factors, including the pace of bodily movement, framing, camera movement, editing and narrative development. The chapter illustrated how Wong ‘put[s]…time into’ his filmic bodies by continually separating bodily action from clear narrative development and through the slowing down and speeding up of tempo and the temporality of his filmic bodies.%! It linked tempo and temporality to conceptions of haptic, tactile images arguing that each tempo/temporality, specifically slowness and frenetic pace, enacts its own kind of cinematic materiality in regards to filmic bodies.

This chapter examined the juxtaposition of fast and slow rhythms arguing that it is vital to the tactile appeal of Wong’s filmic bodies. It contended that the director breaks with the conventions of classical narration, instead adapting the

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros (Eds.), Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and Performance (Sydney: Power Publications, 1999) 9. 4 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image [Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta] (London: The Athlone Press, 1989) 189.

253 pause-burst-pause rhythmic structure of Hong Kong cinema and Chinese theatre, extending pauses and condensing and abstracting bursts of action. It argued that by setting up stark contrasts between these divergent tempos, Wong produces a series of fractures that further emphasise the material qualities of his filmic bodies through an effect of segmentation or fragmentation related to rhythm and temporality.

In explaining the tactile potential of rhythm in Wong’s filmic bodies as part of his broader fragmentary aesthetic, Chapter Three provides a way of understanding this important and often sidelined aspect of the affective potential of film performance in his work and in cinema more broadly. Though this focus on the tempo of film performance was prompted by its importance in Wong’s films, Laura Mulvey’s contention that many star performances are complex modulations between ‘energy [and] a stillness of display’ suggests that the understanding of the effects of rhythmic juxtaposition established in Chapter

Three could be fruitfully applied to many other film performances.5 The ideas presented in Chapter Three could also be brought back to an analysis of the affective properties of radical shifts in tempo in Hong Kong cinema, as noted by

~~Ackbar Abbas and David Bordwell.6~~

Expanding the thesis’ understanding of Wong’s fragmentary approach to performing bodies to all objects in the frame, Chapter Four argued that his emphasis on the shared materiality of the performers’ physical surrounds

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 Laura Mulvey, Death 24 x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (London: Reaktion Books, 2006) 162. 6 Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997). David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000) 224 & 278 and ‘Aesthetics in Action: Kungfu, Gunplay, and Cinematic Expressivity’ in Esther Ching-Mei Yau (Ed.), At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) 80-82.

254 contributes to his filmic bodies’ bodily appeal for spectators. The chapter focused on Wong’s In the Mood for Love (2000), the strongest example of this aspect of his filmic bodies. It contended that the way the material texture of setting and other objects in the mise-en-scene come together with the performing body is crucial to creating his uniquely partial, tactile and resonant filmic bodies.

Further, the chapter demonstrated how In the Mood for Love creates partial, tactile, resonant space that produces a tangible sense of spatial constriction focused around the filmic bodies of Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai.

~~This chapter argued that such spatial resonance operates between Wong’s films, often in concert with gestural reverberations described in Chapter Two.~~

By taking into account the performer’s physical surrounds in the consideration of the affective potential of Wong’s filmic bodies, Chapter Four offers a way of understanding these, and indeed other film performances, as complex amalgams of bodily performance, setting and the cinematic apparatus.

In broadening the scope of analysis of the material appeal of film performance to include the relationship between performing bodies, the physical attributes of setting and a film’s spatial code, the chapter provides a way of understanding this important and often ignored aspect of affective engagement with performance on screen.

Crucially, the analysis undertaken by this thesis asserts that attending to the details of surface, to the stylistic elements that make up the performance on screen, provides a method by which we can begin to understand how film performance addresses the spectator bodily. This thesis has demonstrated that in

~~Wong’s films, performance operates within a broader aesthetic of fracture and that this aesthetic is vital to creating the conditions for the spectator’s bodily~~

255 engagement. By focusing on the stylistic aspects of film performance, it has been established that partiality, abstraction and tactility are produced by combinations of specific stylistic elements. Further, it explains how this partiality and incompleteness brought about by elements of style allows a sense of openness that encourages images and sensations to accumulate and travel both within and between films. In doing so this thesis brings greater insight into the complex and sometimes mysterious nature of the affective engagements with Wong’s filmic bodies and performance on screen more broadly.

In these closing remarks it is useful to return to a consideration of the particularly resonant filmic bodies created in 2046. As the examples from this film presented in Chapters One, Two and Four indicate, this film and the film performances that take place within it function as palimpsests that are crowded with the ghostly presence of countless fragments from Wong’s oeuvre. 2046 represents an important summation of the director’s work up until that point and draws together many of the stylistic elements discussed in this thesis. The film reflects back stylistically on films that preceded it. Tony Rayns describes 2046 as ‘part sequel, part revision, part remix, part aftermath’ of In the Mood for

Love.7 However, the resonances in 2046 are not limited to its relation to just one of Wong’s previous films, but, rather most, if not all of the films that came before it. Because of this, the filmic bodies in this film represent the strongest example of the cumulative effect of Wong’s film style on film performance.

~~2046, like most of Wong’s other films, tells several different stories of love lost and unrequited. The film’s main protagonist, Chow Mo-wan (Leung~~

~~Chiu-wai) is a journalist and philanderer living in the Hong Kong of the 1960s.~~

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 Tony Rayns, ‘The Long Goodbye’ Sight and Sound 15:1 (January, 2005) 24.~~

256 The film is mainly focused on charting Chow’s many love affairs, both past and present. These include: a failed and largely unrequited relationship with a mysterious gambler, So Lai-chen (Gong Li), a run in with an ex-lover that fails to remember him (Carina Lau), an on-again-off-again sexual relationship with his neighbour, Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi) and another unrequited romance that turns into friendship with his landlord’s daughter, Wang Jing-wen (Faye Wong). There are also a couple of very brief appearances by another So Lai-chen (Maggie

Cheung), as another failed love affair that haunts Chow’s memories. However, like the Chow character himself, Cheung’s Lai-chen in 2046 is a slightly sexed up version of the character from In the Mood for Love creating a rupture and resonation rather than a continuation of the same character. The film also tells the story of Jing-wen’s romance with Tak (Takuya Kimura), a Japanese businessman who comes to stay in the Oriental Hotel, owned by her father

(Wang Sum) and home to many of the film’s main characters. Interspersed with these stories is the visualisation of Chow’s science-fiction serial. These science- fiction episodes reflect many aspects of the story and feature many of the same performers portraying fictionalised versions of their characters or combinations of characters from the film’s main story. For instance, Kimura plays a lovelorn time traveller that represents both Chow and Tak, while Faye Wong plays a cyborg that represents an amalgamation of Jing-wen and the two Lai-chens. The stories told in 2046 are familiar, as throughout Wong’s oeuvre, they recall each other and similar stories from his other films.

In 2046 Wong gathers together several of the same performers from his previous films, including Leung Chiu-wai, Faye Wong, Lau, Chen Chang and very briefly, Maggie Cheung. As was explored in Chapter Two, the film also

257 features a variation on the Chow character from In the Mood for Love played by the same performer. This thesis defined Wong’s filmic bodies as complex configurations of performer, modes of performance, stories, characters, scenes, rhythmic structures, shots, settings, bodily actions, staging, framing, camera movement, film speed, editing and sound. 2046 exemplifies how these elements return and vary in his films to foster personal, bodily relationships between the spectator and Wong’s filmic bodies.

2046 is indicative of the importance of stylistic connection and revision at the heart of Wong’s films and filmic bodies. The narrative structure is elliptical, and at times circular, and the characters lack clear-cut motivations and goals. Interestingly, the director’s use of voice over narration departs from the ambiguous stream of consciousness meanderings in his earlier work and instead is used in a more a conventional way to fill in gaps in the story and orient the spectator both temporally and spatially. As in In the Mood for Love, a blank, automatic mode of performance dominates encouraging a focus on the bodily, rhythmic, material aspects of performance. The visual style of 2046 is a mix of the smooth tracking shots and slow paced editing exemplified in In the Mood for

Love, paired with jittery hand-held camera work, step-printed slow motion and fast cutting from earlier films, with the former elements dominating. The film operates as a kind of stylistic omnibus, returning to and reworking elements from across Wong’s oeuvre.

~~Discussing the making of 2046, Leung Chiu-wai comments that for him~~

~~‘[t]he last scene in Days of Being Wild and [the] first scene in 2046 can be glued together as if they are happening on the same night. But in life there is a 12-year~~

258 difference.’8 Leung Chiu-wai’s remark describes the kind of temporal folding that occurs throughout Wong’s oeuvre but is particularly pronounced in the filmic bodies in 2046. Returning briefly to the scenes from Days of Being Wild and 2046 that open the Introduction and Chapter One, the analysis undertaken in this thesis allows us to reach an understanding about just how the connection of disparate moments is achieved.

This thesis has artificially separated out the different elements and effects of Wong’s fragmentary approach to film performance to facilitate detailed analysis of specific aspects of his fragmented filmic bodies. However, these elements often occur simultaneously, creating filmic bodies that are at once partial, rhythmic and spatially enmeshed. Here then, in these concluding remarks it is possible to bring these elements back together in order to synthesise them.

~~The scenes that open the Introduction and Chapter One, both involving~~

~~Leung Chiu-wai readying himself for a night out, like many others throughout~~

~~Wong’s oeuvre, resonate with each other chiefly through the complex array of stylistic elements that create the filmic body. This is achieved through Leung~~

Chiu-wai’s bodily and opaque mode of performance, the unhurried rhythm and ordinary habitual nature of his bodily motions, the everyday, cramped setting that crowds in and surrounds his body, the fragmentary nature of the scene in

Days of Being Wild on the one hand, and the return of all these elements in the scene in 2046 on the other. All these aspects amount to a sense of constant reformation of elements in different configurations. This thesis has shown that by focusing the spectator’s attention on the tactile surface of the image, by

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 Wong Kar-wai, ‘Tony Leung’ Interview 35:8 (September, 2005) 198.~~

~~259 attuning them to the textures of rhythm and space, Wong creates filmic bodies that can connect materially with one another for the spectator.~~

As Roger Ebert ponders ‘what [2046] could possibly mean to anyone not familiar with Wong’s work and style’, this thesis speculates on what his film performances could mean to those spectators who are familiar with his body of work.9 This thesis has contemplated what these filmic bodies could mean to spectators conversant in the director’s films as a matter of experiential knowledge of his film style. While the thesis charts the development of Wong’s style over time, it also maps the important through-line of fragmentation across the different transformations of his style. Through this ‘authorial trademark’, as

Bordwell would call it, Wong teaches spectators to view his films and filmic bodies as never complete and always in connection with each other. This encourages spectators to invest in making such connections and creates a continual refiguring of moments through these connections.10

As spectators, we carry with us the memory of affective experiences. In watching one of Wong’s films it is not images that resonate, but tactile experiences, affects and sensations that travel from film to film through the embodied, active spectator forming connections between these cinematic memories. This thesis has tried to elucidate the concrete, stylistic features of

Wong’s work that foster these experiences for spectators who risk the ambiguity that arises from things never being complete in exchange for the payoff of experiencing these filmic bodies in personal, bodily, affective ways.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 9 Roger Ebert, ‘2046’ Chicago Sun-Times (September 2, 2005), http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050901/REVIEWS/50822004/1023 ! 10 David Bordwell, ‘Art-Cinema Narration’ in Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985) 211.

260 The spectator’s bodily engagement with these fragmented filmic bodies hinges on a pattern of performative and cinematic reverberations, repetitions and variations described in the previous chapters. These stylistic connections can create what might ultimately be called an “affective intertext”, an effect of overlap where filmic bodies operate as intersections or ‘crossroads’ in which residues from other moments both within and between his films intercede and fracture the current moment’s unfolding.11 Reading Wong’s filmic bodies as affective intertexts is particularly useful for theorising how they encourage spectators to participate actively and bodily in forming connections between disparate fragments, both within and between his films, through an engagement with their material textures. It describes how filmic bodies function as primary sites for connective affective experiences through the repetition and variation of a range of stylistic elements.

~~Christopher Doyle describes 2046 as ‘a bridge we had to burn’.12 In~~

~~2005, speaking of the costs that went into making 2046, Doyle predicted that~~

Wong would not be able to work in the same way into the future.13 Doyle’s prediction can be seen to have come to fruition. After 2046, the director made his first American feature film My Blueberry Nights (2007) based on a script co- written with an American screenwriter. Though My Blueberry Nights resembles the visual style of the director’s earlier work, it lacks the sense of stylistic innovation that characterises it. Similarly, Wong’s latest film to date The

~~Grandmaster (2013) retains some of the stylistic aspects of the director’s earlier~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 Jean-Marc Lalanne defines Wong’s stories as ‘less stories than crossroads of stories’ in ‘Images From the Inside’ in Jean-Marc Lalanne, David Martinez, Ackbar Abbas and Jimmy Ngai (Eds.), Wong Kar-wai (Paris: Dis Voir, 1997) 11. 12 Ben Walters, ‘Hong Kong Dreaming: Cinematographer Christopher Doyle Talks to Ben Walters About 2046’ Sight and Sound 15:4 (April, 2005) 86. 13 S. F. Said, ‘The Eyes Have It: Cinematographer Christopher Doyle Makes the World Afresh With Every Film’ Vertigo 2:8 (April, 2005) 3.

~~261 work but lacks the sense of innovation that typifies the rest of his Hong Kong films.~~

Wong’s The Grandmaster became available very close to the completion of this research and as such only makes an appearance here in the concluding comments. This means that the work of connecting this film to the ideas in this thesis could be developed much further. However, it is possible to at least begin the task with what follows, to draw some comparisons and suggest where this new film sits in regards to the core argument of this thesis.

~~The Grandmaster is Wong’s first film to be based on real-life characters.~~

~~It tells the story of four martial arts masters, Ip Man (Leung Chiu-wai), Gong Er~~

~~(Zhang Ziyi), Ma San (Zhang Jin) and The Razor (Chang Chen), centring mainly on the first two.14 Set in mainland China and Hong Kong and spanning 1936 to~~

1953 the film focuses on the struggle to maintain one’s honour in the martial arts world, the events of World War II (in particular the Japanese occupation), the relationship between Ip and Er and Er’s quest to avenge the death of her father.

The director’s first foray into creating a film about real-life characters also marks a stylistic shift towards more conventional modes of cinematic storytelling. As this thesis has shown, this kind of stylistic shifting occurs throughout the director’s body of work and is in fact an important component of his approach to film style. However, the stylistic shift that occurs with The Grandmasters is largely toward established conventions of classical narration rather than the innovative stylistic developments that usually characterise these changes.

~~The film departs in some ways from the tenets of Wong’s style discussed in this thesis. The main departure is its move away from his usually elliptical and~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 14 The Man San character could have easily been played by Leslie Cheung had he still been alive. The performer’s arrogant gait in particular recalls Leslie’s.

262 circular approach to narrative toward a more conventional, linear, cause and effect structure. The chief causal agent of this more linear structure is the Er character, who has quite clear-cut motivations and goals throughout the film.

~~Though the Ip character maintains a certain psychological opaqueness, in an interview Leung Chiu-wai noted that in ‘[a]ll the other films I’ve made with~~

[Wong], I have never been given a character as clear-cut as the one I played in this film.’15 The film often employs intertitles and voice over narration to orient the spectator in time and place, largely breaking with the temporal and spatial ambiguity produced by these techniques in his previous work. Visually the film also diverges from the director’s earlier style. For instance, The Grandmaster, like Ashes of Time (1994), features many scenes of fighting. However, unlike his earlier martial arts film, these scenes are presented in the conventional clear, crisp style Hong Kong action cinema is well-known for.16 There is also a lack of everyday gestures and settings, though they occur now and then. Most scenes are concerned with action that moves the narrative forward as opposed to the repetitive everyday motions and otherwise ineffectual actions described in this thesis. Close framing is used heavily as usual, but it is often employed in a rather more conventional manner to focus attention on the expression of thoughts and emotions on the faces of the characters. However, even with this more conventional work many of the key stylistic attributes analysed in this thesis

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15 Shawne Wang, ‘The Grandmaster: Q&A with Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Wong Kar-wai’ F: Movie Magazine, http://www.fmoviemag.com/c/features/item/1007-the-grandmaster-interview. Leung Chiu-wai comments that unlike all the other films he has made with Wong in The Grandmaster ‘we have a real person that my character is based on, and we wanted this Ip Man to be a blend of the real Ip Man and a little bit of Bruce Lee, so I had a lot of stuff I could work with to prepare’ He suggest that the other actors on set were not given such a clear idea of their characters saying ‘I was the luckiest actor in the production! Only I knew what was going on! The other actors were walking the path I had taken before.’ 16 For an detailed account of Hong Kong film style see David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000)

~~263 remain, indicating Wong’s continual interest in fostering stylistic connections between his films.~~

In The Grandmaster, Wong still employs several of his stylistic signatures allowing the film to read as a continuation of the director’s project regarding filmic bodies. Leung Chiu-wai largely resumes the blank mode he employed in Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love and 2046. Indeed, in a review of The Grandmaster Maggie Lee criticises Leung Chiu-wai’s lack of

‘emotional variation’ as a weakness of his performance, as he fails to externalise the appropriate emotions in times of sorrow.17 Though Zhang’s Er character has very clear goals and motivations, Wong retains a certain opaqueness as to the motivations and goals of the other characters.

The film moves unevenly between the stories of the four characters, producing a sense of too much story ‘to hold together’, familiar from the rest of his oeuvre.18 For instance, The Razor character remains largely unexplained with just a few scenes dedicated to him, including one shot in which Er returns an engagement ring in a fragment of a romance that never unfolded on screen.19

~~This operates in a similar way to Leung Chiu-wai’s scene at the end of Days of~~

Being Wild. Like the scene from Days of Being Wild, The Razor character represents a kind of overflow, where not all the stories fit neatly into the unfolding narrative and inevitably are present ‘only [in] bits and pieces’.20

~~Wong’s interest in shifts in tempo continues here. Step-printed slow motion is used extensively to blur the performers’ movements slightly and~~

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Maggie Lee, ‘Review: “The Grandmaster” Variety, http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/the- grandmaster-1117948960/ 18 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 9. 19 Footage in the ‘Making of’ extras on the Hong Kong DVD release of the film depicts several other scenes involving the Razor that were relegated to the cutting room floor. The Grandmasters DVD released in 2013 by Mei Ah Entertainment, Hong Kong. 20 Lalanne, ‘Images From the Inside’ 9.

264 produce a subtle jittery feel to the image. This manipulation of film speed is used for the most part to capture slow bodily actions as opposed to fast motion, which in his other films creates blur and incoherence in the image. Regular slow motion is used to slow down fast motions and lend these movements an elegance and texture as it does in his other films. However, the shift away from everyday gestures and spaces deprives these filmic gestures of much of their affective appeal. Shifts between fast and slow movement are largely evident in scenes of fighting where performers move back and forth between pause and rapid bodily movement as they fight one another. The film does include several quite slow scenes, some of which are dedicated to the characters doing very little such as eating, drinking and smoking.

Overall The Grandmaster continues Wong’s interest in the sensual, tactile qualities of performing bodies and their surrounds. There is a strong focus on bodily actions, with many gestures separated out by close framing. The material textures of objects and hands touching these tactile objects are also foregrounded. Obstructive framing and staging features as well, though not as heavily as in his earlier films. Wong’s focus on the weight and obstructive function of rain and smoke is also present and finds a variation in the use of snow. Much of the film also takes place at night, combined with the use of dim lighting, which continues the director’s interest in creating a sense of constriction. This is also supported by his usual heavy use of close shots. These continuing stylistic traits produce moments that connect the filmic bodies in this film with others from Wong’s oeuvre.

~~Even within this real-life story, Wong manages to insert some repetition of scenes, shots and gestures from his earlier films. Er and Ip write letters to each~~

~~265 other, which recalls scenes in both In the Mood for Love and 2046. At one point~~

Leung Chiu-wai’s character washes his wife’s (Song Hye Gyo) feet. This scene recalls a scene in Chungking Express in which Leung Chiu-wai’s cop character gives Faye (Faye Wong) a foot massage. Near the end of the film Wong frames

~~Ip and Er walking together down a narrow street at night in a very similar fashion to his previous two Hong Kong films. The Chow character from In the~~

~~Mood for Love and 2046 ghosts the character of Ip in a short sequence depicting~~

Ip dressed in a new suit and tie reminiscent of Chow’s costume in the earlier films. In a short sequence the camera moves around Leung Chiu-wai dressed in this suit, sitting and slowly smoking, capturing his gestures in slightly jittery step-printed slow motion.

Though The Grandmaster continues many of the elements that foster connections between his filmic bodies, it departs in some of the stylistics vital to this thesis. While his latest film represents the continuation of some of his themes and stylistics, the sense of incompleteness and open-endedness that allows affective, material connections to be made is somewhat curtailed by the linear and largely unambiguous way in which the film unfolds. Comparing The

~~Grandmaster to 2046 solidifies the position of his earlier film as an endpoint for a way of making films and a mode of engaging with them.~~

~~The significance of this thesis for studies of Wong’s work lies in its illumination of the vital and largely ignored role of performance in his film style.~~

~~Rather than a conventional psychological reading of film performance in which~~

~~‘the actor hardly existed except as an agent of narrative’, this thesis offers a reading that links performance to the director’s broader aesthetic of partiality,~~

266 abstraction, ambiguity, rhythm, materiality, and resonance.!'( Through this shift in focus, this thesis offers an understanding of the important role played by these filmic bodies in encouraging spectatorial bodily involvement in his films.

This thesis also develops important links between Wong’s film style and both the art-cinema style proposed by Bordwell and mainstream Hong Kong film style. Though Bordwell does little to locate the art-cinema tradition he describes in the cultural context that initially produced it, by drawing out connections between Deleuze’s time-image cinema, art-cinema and traits at work in Wong’s cinema this thesis suggests some important through-lines on the level of performance that suggest possible cultural parallels between these temporally disparate styles. The art-cinema style described by Bordwell refers to the work of several European directors in the post World War II period into the 1960s.

Though it does not make up part of Bordwell’s analysis, the radical stylistic choices made by these directors can be understood as reflecting a broader context that was questioning established ideas about art and specifically established conventions of storytelling. One can identify a similar tendency toward self-examination in Wong and the broader Hong Kong new wave. As the stylistic analysis undertaken in this thesis shows, Wong, like other art-cinema filmmakers, breaks with several conventions of classical film style. Like art- cinema directors, Wong draws the spectator’s attention to the film medium and to the way stories unfold cinematically. This suggests that the kinds of departures from the dominant classical mode that link Wong’s style to art- cinema style are in fact recurrent ways in which filmmakers have encouraged spectators to participate in and question how stories unfold on screen.

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Naremore, Acting in the Cinema 2.~~

267 Wong’s reworking of stylistic elements of Hong Kong mainstream cinema is also important as it places him not outside the mainstream but rather on the periphery of it. These adaptations are indicative of Wong’s position as an

~~‘art house’ director in the highly commercialised context of Hong Kong cinema.~~

As has been suggested at points in this thesis, Wong’s work at times represents a reigning in of more radical tendencies. A good example of this is his initial intention to have Leung Chu-wai and Cheung plays all the roles in In the Mood for Love. However, like the stories that don’t quite fit into the final films, these tendencies do not disappear but rather exist as ghostly elements, part of the everything ‘could have been otherwise’ feeling that pervades his films and invites spectators to engage with them beyond the experience of the film itself.22

This thesis also makes an important contribution to studies of film performance more generally. Establishing the stylistic elements of Wong’s film performances, and through comparisons between these choices and those of other stylistic traditions and innovative filmmakers, the thesis contributes to a stylistic history of film performance. In particular, it highlights the importance of

Wong’s stylistic departures from classical narration for the ways they create a markedly different kind of film performance, and hence encourage a different kind of relationship between performing bodies on screen and the body of the spectator. Focusing on how film performance or filmic bodies operate as a combination of performance and several other elements of film style, the thesis develops this model for understanding how ‘human bodies…within the cinematic frame’ function as material filmic events that are able to engage and

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 22 Martin, ‘Perhaps’.~~

~~268 move spectators bodily.23 It also enriches the concept of the filmic body through its theorisation of the effect of fragmentation on the way spectators might engage with them.~~

~~Attending to the surface textures of Wong’s filmic bodies calls for the development of conceptual tools in order to understand their affective potential.~~

Extending Marks’ understanding of haptic images to the study of filmic bodies, this thesis suggests how film styles that embrace the fragmentary propensity of the film medium can create tactile, affective film performances. The centrality of rhythm to these filmic bodies prompts an approach to understanding the tactile potential of tempo in film performance. The enmeshment of performing bodies and their material surrounds demands an understanding of film performance that takes into account how the physical surrounds impinge on, shape and become a part of the material texture of filmic bodies. Lastly, this thesis suggests a way to understand film performance in the work of this particular director as a matter of stylistic interconnection and a mode of spectatorship that is personal, active and bodily. It suggests avenues for the further study of film performance within film styles that are marked by their acceptance of the fragmentary nature of the film medium.

As Sophie Wise so aptly points out, the degree to which the fragmentary nature of the film medium is ‘accepted’ varies widely.24 The model for the analysis of film performance proposed in this thesis could be fruitfully applied to the work of other directors that accept in one way or another film’s fragmentary nature. For instance, this model could be used to analyse the fragmentary

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 23 Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 9. 24 Sophie Wise, ‘What I Like About Hal Hartley, Or Rather, What Hal Hartley Likes About Me: The Performance of the (Spect)actor’ in Stern and Kouvaros, Falling for You 245-275 and Feral, ‘Performance and Theatricality’ 172.

~~269 features of Robert Bresson’s filmic bodies. The blank mode of performance and fragmentation of the performing bodies achieved through framing and editing in~~

~~Bresson’s work could be fruitfully analysed for the kinds of filmic bodies these elements produce and the ways spectators may engage with them outside a projection-identification model.~~

This thesis challenges several key paradigms of film studies by shifting the focus of analysis away from semiotic and psychoanalytic understandings of the way films mean and instead focusing on how stylistic elements can engage the spectator in a tactile, bodily manner. This dominant approach was established in the 1970s and 80s by key theorists such as Christian Metz and Jean-Louis

Baudry, Kaja Silverman, Laura Mulvey and Mary Ann Doane.25 In its continual focus on the way spectators engage with cinema as a set of signs to be read these approaches effectively sidelined the affective, tactile aspects of film spectatorship.

Traditional semiotic and psychoanalytic approaches, for the most part conceive of the spectator as disembodied. Linda Williams quotes Metz’ description of the spectator ‘taking everything with their eyes, nothing with their bodies’ as indicative of this understanding the spectator.26 The focus of analysis is uncovering deeper and sometimes hidden meanings of films. This analysis often ignored or treated with suspicion, pleasurable and bodily engagements with !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema [Translated by Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster and Alfred Guzzetti] (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), Jean-Louis Baudry, ‘Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus’ and ‘The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema’ in Philip Rosen (Ed.), Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) 286-298 and 299-318, Kaja Silverman, The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), Laura Mulvey ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Screen 16:3 (Autumn, 1975) 6-18, Mary Ann Doane, ‘Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator’ Screen 23 (September-October, 1982) 3-4, 74-88 and The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). 26 Linda Williams (Ed.), Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995) 2.

270 the film medium. As Williams explains elsewhere, critics have historically considered film genres that seek to elicit strong emotional and bodily responses, or ‘body genres’, such as pornography, melodrama and horror to be ‘low’ genres.27

As Stern and Kouvaros explain, in its ‘decided rejection of the descriptive’ instead favouring ‘scientific or technical’ language film studies sidelined considerations of cinema’s affective potential. This thesis grapples with this by examining how film creates particular kinds of materiality by employing elements of film style, specifically in regards to film performance. In particular, fracture, tactility, rhythm and the materiality of cinematic space, are flagged as vital to the way the cinematic apparatus can create images that may engage spectators bodily.

By concentrating on the surface textures of these films this thesis challenges the strictures of these still dominant approaches in film studies. In its detailed descriptions of the stylistic surface of Wong’s filmic bodies this thesis challenges traditional paradigms of film studies that primarily seek to elucidate a film’s meaning. Though representation and meaning remains important, it provides a less than comprehensive understanding of what film can and does do.

~~Attending to the materiality of specific stylistic choices is one way of expanding our understanding of the potential of the medium and the many ways it can engage the spectator.~~

Wong’s films and in particular the filmic bodies he creates represent important examples of the potential of film to engage us bodily. However, there are countless other films and filmic bodies that appeal to spectators’ senses in a

~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 Linda Williams, ‘Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess’ Film Quarterly 44:4 (Summer, 1991) 3,~~

271 variety of ways. By attending to other affectively charged filmic bodies as amalgamations of stylistic elements we are able to develop our understanding of film performance and the affective potential of the medium more broadly.

~~272 FILMOGRAPHY~~

~~All That Heaven Allows. (1955). Dir. Douglas Sirk. USA.! ! ! Amorous Woman of the Tang Dynasty (Tang Chao Haofang Nu). (1984). Dir. Eddie Fong. Hong Kong.!~~

~~Ashes of Time (Dong Xidu). (1994). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong/China/Taiwan.!~~

~~Ashes of Time Redux (Dong Xidu). (2008). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong/China/Taiwan.!~~

~~As Tears Go By (Wangjiao Kamen). (1988). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong.~~

~~A Woman Under the Influence. (1974). Dir. John Cassavetes. USA.~~

~~Beyond the Clouds. (1995). Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni. France/Germany/Italy~~

~~Chungking Express (Chongquing Senlin). (1994). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong.~~

~~Days of Being Wild (A Fei Zhengzhuan). (1990). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong.~~

~~Eros. (2004). Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni/Steven Soderbergh/Wong Kar-wai. Italy/France/Luxembourg/UK/USA/Hong Kong.~~

~~Fallen Angels (Duoluo Tianshi). (1995). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong.~~

~~273 Final Victory (Zui Hou Sheng Li). (1987). Dir. Patrick Tam. Hong Kong.~~

~~Happy Together (Chunguang Zhaxie). (1997). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong.~~

~~Imitation of Life. (1959). Dir. Douglas Sirk. USA.~~

~~In the Mood for Love (Huayang Nianhua). (2000). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong/France/Thailand.~~

~~In the Mood for Love 2001. (2001). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong.~~

~~Last Year at Marienbad (L’Année Dernière à Marienbad). (1961). Dir. Alain Resnais. France/Italy.~~

~~L’Avventura (The Adventure). (1960). Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni. Italy/France.~~

~~L’Eclisse (The Eclipse). (1962). Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni. Italy/France.~~

~~Masculin Féminin (Masculine-Feminine). (1966). Dir Jean-Luc Godard. France/Sweden.~~

~~My Blueberry Nights. (2007). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. USA/Hong Kong/China/France.~~

~~On Connaît la Chanson (Same Old Song). (1998). Dir. Alain Resnais. France/Switzerland/UK/Italy.~~

~~Pickpocket. (1959). Dir. Robert Bresson. France.~~

~~The Grandmaster (Yi Dai Zong Shi). (2013). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong/China/USA.~~

~~The Lady from Shanghai. (1948). Dir. Orson Welles. USA.~~

~~274 2046. (2004). Dir. Wong Kar-wai. China/France/Germany/Hong Kong.!~~

~~Written on the Wind. (1956). Dir. Douglas Sirk. USA. !~~

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