Do you understand "Carmen in Mong Kok"?

Needless to say, you also know that "Carmen in Mong Kok" is wong kar-wai's first independent film as a director.

It was released in Hong Kong in June 1988 and grossed more than 10 million, but that was 30 years ago.

Crowded alleys.

He used Maggie Cheung, who was still known as a "vase" at the time, and Andy Lau, who had just been released from the snow by TVB.

Quite bold.

Both were nominated for Best Male and Female Protagonist at the 1989 Academy Awards.

It proves that Wong Kar Wai's eyes are very unique!

Carmen Mong Kok

Born in Shanghai, Wong Kar-wai immigrated to Hong Kong with his parents at the age of 5, then to the United States with his parents, and then returned to Hong Kong after studying.

Frequent migrations make the concept of "city" illusory and ethereal for him, and the different living environments have created him to have a sensitivity and insight into age and emotions that exceed others.

As a teenager, he liked Fellini, and the video style that mixed dreams and Baroque art deeply influenced wong Kar-wai's later filmmaking style.

Later, Wong Kar-wai incorporated his own understanding of Hong Kong into the film: the emotional entanglement of constant encounters and misses, the urban alienation of wanting to touch and withdrawing his hand.

All of this has also become the literary and artistic enlightenment of our generation.

Before 1988, Hong Kong gangster films only had brotherhood, Wu Yusen's "The True Colors of Heroes" portrayed brotherhood with blood boiling, and Jackie played by Zhu Baoyi was more like a pleasing vase placed there.

Lin Lingdong's "Fengyun Trilogy" has completed two parts, almost no female characters exist in "Prison Storm", and the women in "Dragon and Tiger Storm" only have the role of dragging their legs.

Gangster movies seemed to have nothing to do with love and women until "Carmen of Mong Kok" appeared.

This title is a bit wonderful, according to Wong Kar-wai, in fact, "Carmen in Mong Kok" was originally another story, telling that the young detective liked a dancer, and the story of the opera "Carmen" was placed in Mong Kok, Hong Kong.

However, several actors during the filming of this scene mistakenly thought that they were now filming the story, so when asked by the reporter again, they said that the movie was called "Carmen of Mong Kok".

Originally, Wong Kar-wai wanted to correct the name before the movie was released, but everyone definitely had a good name, so let the misunderstanding continue.

As for why the actors don't know what story is being filmed?

As you know, Wong Kar-wai has never had a fixed script for making movies.

Maggie Cheung is a Hong Kong sister, who has been playing a twittering little beauty in movies and television before, and her beauty is beautiful and has no soul.

It wasn't until she received the role of "Cousin A'e" in "Carmen, Mong Kok" that she established her own performance style.

In an interview years later, Andy Lau said that his favorite type of woman is Maggie Cheung in "Carmen" in Mong Kok.

Pure and lovely, low eyebrows and pleasing eyes, less verbal but full of style.

The role of the cousin changed the situation that women in the gangster films could only do embellishments in the past, adding a romantic color to the subject: she also became an involuntary part of the jianghu.

Her appearance changed Hua Tsai's mentality, so that the prodigal son decided to turn back to the shore; she said very little, knowing that the men around her were doing a living today and not tomorrow, but would only say "come back as soon as possible".

Maggie Cheung accurately grasped the scale of refusal and refusal, and the feelings of the two people sprouted very delicately, probably planting seeds in a smile.

The way these two people made love is also very "Wong Kar Wai". Most of Wong Kar-wai's films have a carrier or image used to pin emotions:

For example, the "pineapple can" in "Chongqing Forest", the "legless bird" in "The Legend of Ah Fei", the "waterfall" in "Spring Break", and the "drunken dream dead wine" in "East Evil and West Poison".

This tradition actually began in "Carmen in Mong Kok", when my cousin left Hua Tsai with a few glasses and a letter before leaving:

There was cooked rice in the kitchen, and I bought a few cups, which I knew wouldn't be broken before long, so I secretly hid one. When one day you need that cup, give me a call and I'll tell you where to put it.

This glass has become the emotional connection point between the two, and when Hua Tsai found his cousin, he only needed to say a sentence of "I want to tell you that I found the cup", and the audience understood that this was Wong Kar-wai saying in his own way, "I like you, I miss you".

His charm lies in the high degree of conceptualization of emotions, abstraction, and then expressed in a metaphysical way.

This expression is not only expressed in the lines, but also in the style of wong kar-wai when it first appears.

"Carmen of Mong Kok" uses large blocks of color to express emotions, most of the parts that show the fierce struggle of the gangs are in cold blue, and the emotions of Hua Tsai and Ah E are mostly warm colors, alternating orange and red, symbolizing the change of the two people's feelings

The cinematography of this film is Liu Weiqiang, the director of the later "Ancient Puzzle Boy" and "Infernal Affairs", who used handheld photography in "Carmen in Mong Kok" to create a rapid blur of characters and scenes, adding a psychedelic color to the whole film.

Some of these shots are also different from the traditional editing methods of commercial blockbusters, and more of a subjective emotion of the director is integrated into it. For example, at the beginning of the movie, the fourth aunt calls Hua Tsai to say that the cousin is coming, and the next shot jumps directly to the cousin's deck on the dock, and at this moment the voice of the fourth aunt still exists

This way of quickly showing the picture in the mind to the camera is also often seen in wong Kar Wai's later films.

Although the film was Wong Kar-wai's debut, it had laid the foundation for a later maturing style.

The "sense of fatalism" created by this film is the most attractive, and the two Chinese boys and black fly in "Carmen in Mong Kok" are wrapped up in the whole era and cannot escape even if they struggle hard.

The black fly has always been the little brother who is only non-committal behind Hua Tsai, he tries hard to get out of position, wants to be looked up to, and finally can only exchange his life for scenery.

Hua Tsai was tired of the life of fighting, killing and killing, and wanted to live a peaceful life with his lover, but he could not watch his brother go to death, and the morality he believed in could only let him die together.

From the first day of falling in love with Hua Tsai, Ah E knew that he might not come back.

The big jianghu makes the three little characters drift and fall, and their story may end, but the jianghu story will not end. "Carmen in Mong Kok" ended, but Wong Kar-wai's movie jianghu opened.