As Tears Go By

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will screen Wong Kar-wai's 1988 film As Tears Go By as a part of their Hard Boiled Hong Kong Weekend Series.

Already saddled with a loose-cannon sidekick who wants to make a name for himself in the underworld, small-time hood Andy Lau winds up playing host to an unexpected houseguest when waifish Maggie Cheung, a cousin from the countryside, turns up on his doorstep. Torn between his lust for Cheung and his loyalty to the streets, Lau struggles to stay on the straight and narrow. After years writing screenplays for television soaps and suspense serials, Wong Kar-wai's feature debut is a gangland melodrama that intersperses its Beretta fireworks with the mesmerizing atmospherics and voluptuous romanticism that define his later masterpieces (In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express, among others). Still Wong's highest-grossing film in Hong Kong, it was nominated for ten HK Film Awards and landed Lau a best supporting actor prize. "As Tears Go By is, from first frame to last, obviously and exquisitely a movie by Wong Kar-wai…the movie finds its true purpose in a tone (dreamy fatalism), a texture (impressionist grunge) and a pose (so, so cool)."—Nathan Lee, The New York Times.
1988/color/102 min. | Scr/dir: Wong Kar-wai; w/ Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, Jacky Cheung
Bing Theater | $10 general admission. $7 museum members, seniors (62+), students with valid ID.