Star crossed Asian film icon Leslie Cheung (Farewell My Concubine, Happy Together) plays Luddy, a devastatingly handsome Hong Kong lothario who seduces and forsakes women without compunction. Abandoned at birth, Luddy's self-destructive search for love is really a Quixotic quest for a feeling of permanence and a sense of identity. When Luddy beguiles lovely shop girl Su Lizen, he unknowingly sets in motion a sequence of broken hearts and unremembered promises that climaxes in naked obsession, inadvertent self-discovery and shocking violence.

In possibly her most engaging performance, Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love, As Tears Go By) invests Su Lizen with ethereal beauty and street level vulnerability. With a supporting cast of Hong Kong cinema notables, including Andy Lau (Fulltime Killer, As Tears Go By) as Su's policeman confessor, and frequent Wong collaborator Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love, Happy Together), Days of Being Wild's visionary audacity and deep romantic conviction sustains and rewards multiple viewings.

The movie as a whole is deceptively simple. There are no elaborate sets or costumes, no big musical motifs, no large shootouts, and no elaborate camera work. In fact, Days of Being Wild would probably be one of the most sparse films I have ever seen. There aren't even any extras in the street scenes. Whether this was due to a low budget or a device manufactured by Wong himself, this forces the viewer to go that much deeper into the characters' lives, even though that might not be a place we might want to go.

Days of Being Wild is a good movie, and one which I would recommend for a viewing, especially if you have liked some of Wong Kar-Wai's other films. However, the movie is almost too depressing to be truly enjoyable, and the bleak tone, meandering style, and lack of resolution ultimately hurts it in the end. Even though I appreciated what Wong was trying to do, it was irritating and almost maddening that he did not fully follow through with any of the characters. Perhaps it is this kind of love/hate relationship (envisioned through filmic devices and Wong's use, misuse, or total disregard for) that causes people to feel so strongly about him.

At any rate, despite any problems I had with the story itself, I feel that Days of Being Wild is a stark and minimalistic cinematic representation of loneliness that, while never seeming to go anywhere or providing any sort of resolution, is still a fairly fascinating movie to watch, because of the performances of the actors.

Note: some people have wondered why Tony Leung is prominetly billed in the promotional materials and the credits, but only has a very small cameo near the end. Supposedly, Wong filmed another sequence with Tony, and even though he liked it, the scene was cut from the final product.