THE EDGE - Leung has Wong's number in `2046'

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Movies

STEPHEN SCHAEFER
476 words
19 August 2005
Boston Herald
All Editions
E19
English
© 2005 Boston Herald Library. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights reserved.

No one makes movies with the freedom and the flair - and what some would call the insanity - of Hong Kong's Wong Kar Wai, whose latest love letter to lost romance and a lost era is "2046."

And no one knows the mysterious Wong better than Tony Leung Chiu Wai, his leading actor and working partner.

"Kar Wai doesn't begin with a script or even a story," Leung said.

In "2046," the actor plays a hack writer who, in '60s Hong Kong, looks back at his womanizing ways and the beauties he loved.

Filming lasted five years.

"The actual shooting days was half a year," Leung said.

At 43, his long relationship with Hong Kong actress Carina Lau may be one reason he's mellow enough to accept Wong's unorthodox methods.

"It doesn't drive me crazy anymore," he said. "I've worked with him for 12 years now, and it's always the same way - and quite adventurous."

Wong and Leung first teamed on "Days of Being Wild" (1991), Wong's second film. Then Leung played a blind assassin in "Ashes of Time" (1994), a gay lover in the ironically titled "Happy Together" (1997) and, most memorably, the faithful lover Chow Mo-wan in Wong's last film, "In the Mood for Love" (2000), which won him the Cannes Best Actor prize.

Leung's biggest hit, "Infernal Affairs" (which he did not make with Wong), has Leonardo DiCaprio reprising his role in the just- filmed Martin Scorsese-directed, Boston-set remake, "The Departed."

"2046" is a sort-of sequel to "Mood for Love," with Wong's refracted storytelling and an eclectic score that mixes opera and Dean Martin.

"I'm so lucky this time - at least on the first day Wong Kar Wai told me about the character," Leung said. "He told (me) he wants me to play the same character I played in `In the Mood for Love,' but this time play it as a new character, totally different. He wanted a very dark, mean, (poet of the gutter Charles) Bukowski-type man - a cynical playboy."

Leung shook his head.

"That was difficult because I'd gotten used to the original Mr. Chow: the gesture, the body language, the tempo, even the voice. But with the same costume, the same hairstyle and the same set, it's very difficult. So I asked for a mustache. At least I have something to believe I'm somebody else. So we argued the first day."

After five years on one Wong movie, Leung begins the next one in January.

"We will do a kung fu movie about the teacher of Bruce Lee. I would be the teacher," he said.

Any worries?

"I have to learn kung fu. I'm not a martial artist."
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"Soon we must all face the choice between what is right...and what is easy"