Leslie Cheung’s Birth Anniversary Marks 70 Years… ‘Days of Being Wild’ Returns in 4K

‘Leslie Cheung’ marks 70 years since his birth, restored perfectly in ‘4K remastering’—a masterpiece by ‘Wong Kar-wai’

An eternal star of the Hong Kong film industry, ‘Leslie Cheung’’s 70th birth anniversary is being marked with a return to the big screen by ‘Days of Being Wild’, widely regarded as the brightest trail within his filmography. The movie’s distributor, NK Contents, officially announced on the 7th that it will re-release the restored version in domestic theaters on the 12th of next month, boasting overwhelming resolution.

First released in 1990, ‘Days of Being Wild’ is a masterpiece that offers a dense look at the wandering of Awi (played by ‘Leslie Cheung’) and the love that keeps colliding and pulling apart. It’s a work that crystallizes the distinctive aesthetic sensibility of director ‘Wong Kar-wai’, a master whose vision reshaped the landscape of Asia’s film scene at the time. Even now, it’s talked about by countless cinephiles as a bible. In particular, the sequence in which Awi, in a white running shirt, dances the mambo while facing his reflection in a room where an old electric fan turns on is an immortal scene that breaks down the barriers of its era.

The ensemble that supports the weight of the film is just as formidable. The acting synergy created when legendary actors who led the golden era of Hong Kong cinema at the time—‘Maggie Cheung’, ‘Andy Lau’, ‘Tony Leung’, and others—come together on a single screen delivers cinematic wonder in itself.

The centerpiece of this re-release is, above all, a visual evolution. The picture quality of the ‘4K remastering’, woven with the latest technology, maximizes director ‘Wong Kar-wai’’s trademark—an at once decadent yet stylish mise-en-scène. From subtle shifts in the characters’ facial expressions to the moisture-laden air of the backstreets of Hong Kong, it is set to vividly restore the aesthetic texture that past film could not capture, inviting audiences once again into the dreamy time-and-space world of 1960s Hong Kong.