Description
Book SynopsisWith 25 essays that embrace a wide spectrum of topics and perspectives including intertextuality, transnationality, gender representation, repetition, the use of music, color, and sound, depiction of time and space in human affairs, and Wong's highly original portrayal of violence, A Companion to Wong Kar-Wai is a singular examination of the prestigious filmmaker known around the world for the innovation, beauty, and passion he brings to filmmaking. Brings together the most cutting edge, in-depth, and interesting scholarship on arguably the greatest living Asian filmmaker, from a multinational group of established and rising film scholars and criticsCovers a huge breadth of topics such as the tradition of the jianghu in Wong's films; queering Wong's films not in terms of gender but through the artist's liminality; the phenomenological Wong; Wong's intertextuality; America through Wong's eyes; the optics of intensities, thresholds, and transfers of energy in Wong's cinema; and the diasporic presence of some ladies from Shanghai in Wong's Hong KongExamines the political, historical, and sociological influence of Wong and his work, and discusses his work from a variety of perspectives including modern, post-modern, postcolonial, and queer theoryIncludes two appendices which examine Wong's work in Hong Kong television and commercials
Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xv
Part One Introduction
Wong Kar-wai: Invoking the Universal and the Local 3
Martha P. Nochimson
Part Two Mapping Wong’s Liminality
1 Transnational Wong 23
Ken Provencher
2 It is a Restless Moment: Wong Kar-wai and the Phenomenology of Flow 47
Joseph G. Kickasola
3 Wong Kar-wai and his jiang hu 80
Bérénice Reynaud
Part Three Thresholds of Texture and Mood
4 Wong Kar-wai’s Cinema of Repetition 115
Ackbar Abbas
5 Wong Kar-wai: The Optics of the Virtual 135
Angelo Restivo
6 Color Design in the Cinema of Wong Kar-wai 153
Shohini Chaudhuri
7 The Value of Re-exports: Wong Kar-wai’s Use of Pre-existing Soundtracks 182
Giorgio Biancorosso
Part Four In the Corridors of History and Culture
8 Wong’s Ladies from Shanghai 207
Gina Marchetti
9 The Sinophone Cinema of Wong Kar-wai 232
Audrey Yue
10 New Queer Angles on Wong Kar-wai 250
Helen Hok-Sze Leung
11 “Pity about the furniture”: Violence, Wong Kar-wai Style 272
Karen Fang
12 In the Mood for Food: Wong Kar-wai’s Culinary Imaginary 295
Mike Ingham and Matthew Kwok-kin Fung
13 Chungking Express, Tarantino, and the Making of a Reputation 319
David Desser
Part Five Close-up of Wong’s Inflections of Time and Space
14 Chungking Express: Slow – Images – Ahead 347
Raymond Bellour (translated by Allyn Hardyck)
15 Wong Kar-wai: The Actor, Framed 353
Joe McElhaney
16 Infidelity and the Obscure Object of History 378
Vivian P.Y. Lee
17 Metonymy, Mneme, and Anamnesis in Wong Kar-wai 397
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
Part Six Focus on Individual Films
18 Serial, Sequelae, and Postcolonial Nostalgia: Wong Kar-wai’s 1960s Hong Kong Trilogy 419
Yiman Wang
19 We Can’t Go On Not Meeting Like This: Fallen Angels and Wong’s Intertextuality 438
Martha P. Nochimson
20 The Third Reality: In the Mood for Love 462
Michel Chion (translated by Claudia Gorbman)
21 Cinephiliac Engagement and the Disengaged Gaze in In the Mood for Love 467
Yomi Braester
22 Wong’s America, North and South: My Blueberry Nights and Happy Together 485
Ken Provencher
23 Queer Utopias in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together 508
Carlos Rojas
24 Wong Kar-wai’s Genre Practice and Romantic Authorship: The Cases of Ashes of Time Redux and The Grandmaster 522
Stephen Teo
25 Wong Kar-wai, Auteur and Adaptor: Ashes of Time and In The Mood for Love 540
Wai-ping Yau
Filmography 558
Appendix I Wong Works in Television Chih-ting Chen 562
Appendix II Wong Works in Advertising Chih-ting Chen 569
Selected Bibliography 586
Index 600
