Latin Beats of Wong Kar-wai

Hongkong's Wong Kar-wai is one of my favorite directors. I recently discovered one of his old masterpieces from 1991 yet, Days of Being Wild. The story is about a self-destructive Hong Kong playboy (named Yuddy, played by Leslie Cheung) who discarded his women seemingly at whim. The curious thing was the women he discarded were readily caught on the rebound by other men who crossed paths with him in the film: his best friend & another man who curiously appeared later in his travels as he drifted further into his destructive trajectory. Both, like Yuddy, however, had no qualms in releasing what they caught. Yuddy had an adoptive mother, a former prostitute, who didn't want to reveal the identity of his real mother. We might surmise here that the psychodynamics driving his callous treatment of women is due to his internalized rejection by his real mother.

Is this all about rejection? But what about the peremptory musical chairs of the men among the women? Is this a play on alienated identities, that one can substitute another as a matter of course in a place of transit & transients like Hong Kong? How to ease the pain, search for new identities to redeem one's self from rejection & the ensuing alienation & depression?

The music became Latin as Yuddy went to look for his real mother in the Philippines. I read some reviews of the film & the Western critics just marveled at the novelty of a Latin music in a Wong Kar-wai movie but they failed to get the connection. The real meat of the plot lay in those Latin beats. The Philippines is the Latin part of Asia, & Yuddy's mother is a Filipino mestiza aristocrat (played by Tita Munoz). Those beats were the missing rhytmn of Yuddy's life. Yuddy actually was born Filipino, but his adoptive prostitute mother took him to Hongkong where he grew up as a Chinese. Realizing this, the theme of identity, alienation & rejection hit you with a full force. Yuddy was a Matrioshka doll of assumed identities & affections throughout his life, he was on a desperate sprint to reconnect with his true self- but once again, he was rejected when he visited the mansion of his mother-  no mother's lullaby , no identity, no Latin beats.