Shards of Hopeless Cinematic Romanticism on Valentine's Day

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Another year, another Valentine's Day. And once again, though this year finds me without an official valentine to call my own, as ever, I turn to my great (abstract) love, the cinema—specifically, the sensuous romanticism of that great visual poet of longing and heartbreak, Wong Kar-Wai.

After all those images I posted at my blog last year of characters in Chungking Express and Fallen Angels just staring into space and dreaming/yearning, this year, my Wong-geared thoughts turn to a particularly intoxicating moment of actual action in his summary epic 2046 (2004). It comes late in the film, as Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) says good-bye to the mysterious "Black Spider" (Gong Li) who also has the name of Su Li-zhen, the woman he loved and lost in Wong's previous film In the Mood for Love (2001). This second Su Li-zhen, much like Chow, carries a haunted past that she never reveals to him, but which Chow intuits based as much on his own personal experiences as from her actual elusive behavior. And Chow, ever the lady-killer that he is throughout the shifting chronology and layering of fantasy and reality in 2046, decides that maybe it's best to leave the second Su Li-zhen, lest he keep thinking of the first Su whenever he sees her.

What a send-off Chow gives her! Upon Su's urging...

...he goes in...

...and instead of just holding her, as Su tells her to do, he boldly grabs her...

...and gives her the biggest, longest, most impassioned smooch ever shot on film:

The way Tony Leung just grabs Gong Li and goes for it, like that, kissing her like there really was no tomorrow? Man! The dude is my hero, just for that! (Not that Leung isn't hero-worthy for other reasons...)

And after Chow tells Su to get back in touch with him once she has finally escaped her past, we see Su's multifaceted reaction—first heartbroken, then more reflective:

The way Gong Li wipes that smeared lipstick off her lips, I rather wonder if Wong intended a subtle tribute to Jean-Paul Belmondo's famous lip-touching gesture in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960)...

...which, of course, Jean Seberg repeats at the very end, in a more ominous context:

Or am I merely overlaying one romantic cinematic vision on top of another? As a single cinephile with traces of hopeless romanticism in his soul, I have a tendency to do that...especially on Valentine's Day.

But seriously, folks: Has anyone seen anything so sexy since...hell, since Barbara Stanwyck tousled the heck out of a stunned-into-sexual-submission Henry Fonda's hair in Preston Sturges's The Lady Eve (1941)?

For all you lovebirds out there—attached, single or otherwise—enjoy your day of celebration!

My Year in Film 2010, in Images

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Apologies in advance, dear readers; I was all set to do a detailed year-end round-up yesterday and today, and ring in the new year with the usual batch of resolutions tomorrow. But then real life intervened, as Real Life usually will do. So for now, at least, this image essay will have to suffice as a sum-up of my year in movies.

For much of this year, I shared the opinion of many that 2010 was a pretty middling year for movies. I thought the same of 2009. But then the same thing that happened towards the end of the year in 2009 happened this year: I took a closer look at my personal running list of films seen/rated, and I realized that there were a lot more worthy films than I had remembered. This year, I counted at least 30 new releases I had seen this year that I thought were interesting, challenging, pleasurable, horizon-expanding and so on. So maybe this wasn't so terrible a year for movies after all. As usual, the cinematic riches were there if you were willing to look past what Hollywood offered at the multiplexes. (Of course, not everyone reading this, I'm sure, would have necessarily access to said riches...but thanks to video-on-demand services such as, say, Netflix Instant viewing, there was plenty more available at the adventurous moviegoer's fingertips than ever before.)

Of all the new releases I saw this year, these 10 stood out the most. In alphabetical (read: unranked) order:

Black Swan

Bluebeard

 
Carlos

Dogtooth

Ghost Town

Ne Change Rien

Ondine

Shutter Island

The Strange Case of Angelica

Unstoppable

Others I liked:

45365

Another Year

Around a Small Mountain

Boxing Gym

Catfish

Daddy Longlegs
Eccentricities of a Blond-Haired Girl

Enter the Void

The Father of My Children

Greenberg

Hadewijch

Last Train Home

Life During Wartime

Rabbit Hole

Solitary Man

Somewhere

Sweetgrass

Tangled

Tiny Furniture

True Grit

Vengeance

Vincere

White Material

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

My blind spots this year are legion—Lourdes, Alamar, Our Beloved Month of August, Blue Valentine...and yes, the latest Harry Potter, among many, many others. But while in previous years I might have panicked inside about how not-caught-up I was compared to other cinephiles/film critics offering up their Top 10 lists this time of year...this year, at about the midway point, I honestly began to care less and less about keeping up with the new releases the more time I spent catching up with classic films in repertory screenings. And now that I live in New York, I have much easier access to more of this stuff than I ever had before. It's come to the point where I'm starting to wonder whether I should even bother maintaining a Netflix account anymore!

Of the many cinematic discoveries I made through repertory screenings this year, these had the biggest impact on me. Again, in alphabetical order:

A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

A Movie (1958)

Bigger than Life (1956)

Close-Up (1990)

Cluny Brown (1946)

Every Man for Himself (1980)

Mikey and Nicky (1976)

Modern Times (1936)

The Naked Spur (1953)

Nightfall (1957)

Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (2001)

Woman in the Dunes (1964)

World on a Wire (1973)

Onward to more discoveries in the dark in 2011! In the meantime, feel free to comment on my picks (and omissions) in the comments section; I welcome the opportunity to elaborate on them there.

See you all next year!