CAHIERS DU CINEMA no. 579 - May 2003
Leslie Cheung's Days Of Being Wild
Appreciation: the shining actor of Tsui Hark, Wong Kar Wai and John Woo committed suicide on April 1st. Coming back to years which made of him the star of new Hong Kong cinema.
The first time we saw Leslie Cheung on big screen he made a ghost heart-throbbed. A coming back to life beauty, with wind in her hair, flew around him, an innocent collector totally amazed by this supernatural outburst. In one of the most beautiful poetic scene of the movie, she plunged him into a bath-tub to save him from her relatives - evil ghosts - and finally she embraced him underwater. It was on January 1989 and it was 'A Chinese Ghost Story' directed by Ching Siu Tung and produced by Tsui Hark: the first movie distributed in France of this new era (nouvelle vague) which took hold of Honf Kong cinema 10 years before.
On the same year, on December, we found Leslie Cheung again. We didn't know anything about him, but we've loved him already. This time it was an art-movie: Stanley Kwan's 'Rouge'. And then once again he made a ghost heart-throbbed, the heart of a courtesan who committed suicide (Anita Mui) and went back through the century looking for this young aristocratic man who couldn't marry her because of his social position. Probably ghosts loved Leslie Cheung too much.
Afterward his movies reached us in a desorderly way. We learnt he's been, since the end of 70s, one of the kings of Cantopop, a cult-artist for many generations of teenagers. Then a young up-to-dated actor of successfull romantic comedies. Then we discovered John Woo's 'A better tomorrow'. Wearing a spencer and trousers with creases, perfect darling boy of 80's, he's hot. On this indirect remake of 'Rio Bravo', beside the veteran Ti Lung as John Wayne and the .... Chow Yun Fat as Dean Martin, he is a sort of.... Ricky Nelson, young, impulsive and wild dog.
It's a role of a victim, the desperate disguised actor of 'Farewell My Concubine' (a Chen Kaige's movie, winner of the Palm d'Or 1993 at Cannes Film Festival) who mitigated with opium the torment of his frustrations of love, which gave him his greatest success in the West. Although his most beautiful characters are rather those of hangmen. On 'Days Of Being Wild' Wong Kar Wai gave him his most beautiful role, a handsome indifferent guy who consumes Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau's hearts. Uncorking a soda, combing his gelled hair, dancing alone in his room on Xavier Cugat's music wearing a vest and a pair of pants, each movement of Leslie Cheung is immediately idolatrized by Wong Kar Wai near Stenberg, becoming erotic icons. 'Days Of Being Wild' gave him a Hong Kong Award. He met Wong again twice. On 'Ashes Of Time' (1994) where, as disillusioned mercenary, he sinks himself into dizziness of voluntary amnesia. Then 'Happy Together' (1997). He plays the role of Tony Leung's lover, sometimes an egoist and sadistic pest, sometimes a defenceless child who expects everybody take care of him. Self-destructive narcissus and sometimes a whore. He isn't any more the exterminator angel of 'Days Of Being Wild'. His character is more realist, the actor is more vulnerable. In this film about couple, love and vanity he touches the deepest point of a personal and definitive truth. This would be his last news, his following films never reached Westerners screens.
Going simply toward the legend.
They said his career declined, they said he hardly accepted his age. Wong Kar Wai discovered in Tony Leung his new male model. Leslie Cheung jumped to his death from the 30rd floor of a building last April 1st. It seems it was the floor of the health gym centre. Jumping to death from the window after the last effort against the working of passing time on his body. It's a tragic act of a star, it's going simply toward the legend. On 'Days Of Being Wild', lasciviously lying on his bed, all alone he told himself aloud the story of "the bird without legs which could never get on the ground. It slept in the wind and the only time it could get on the ground it was the day of his death".
'Cahiers du cinéma' is one of the most renowned magazines dedicated to cinema in Europe (and not only in Europe) since several decades. I tried my best to translate from French to English, sorry if my translation isn't good enough and I couldn't translate properly some words. You can read Maggie Cheung's respects to Leslie from 'Cahiers du cinéma' here.