The Cut - Recognizing My Asian Heritage on Film

How do you make a mood? “At the high point of our intimacy, I was just 0.01 centimeters away from her,” a line spoken in Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express, offers some clues. In the film, people are forever missing each other by minutes or millimeters, and it’s from the synaptic spaces between them that Wong conjures a sense of forlorn longing and what could have been. You may want these schisms to close — for the well-matched strangers to consummate their flirtation, for the broken-up couple to reconcile — until it occurs to you that the resolution of the plot points feels like a secondary concern. Wong is known for his auteurish depictions of life in 1960s Hong Kong, and a handful of these are included in a new Criterion Collection boxed set. The director can make a study of a young Cantopop star languishing in the heat of late summer as an electric fan whirs nearby, then, before you’re even aware that it’s happening, by some magic it’s there: a mood.

Blake Bailey told her he’d “wanted her since the day they met.” When they met, she was 12. “Basic” is out — it’s all about “cheugy” now. The discovery of the first pregnant Egyptian mummy surprised researchers. Marilyn Manson has been sued for sexual assault and sex trafficking by Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco. Joe Rogan attempted to clear the air over his controversial statements about COVID vaccines. And Delhi’s crematoriums are overwhelmed with COVID victims. You can help.

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