How Wong Kar-wai challenged Tony Leung to reach greatness: “He wants people to stimulate him”
Partnering one of the best actors of their generation with one of its best directors is inevitably capable of bringing out the best of both, with Wong Kar-wai challenging Tony Leung and pushing him towards the performances that helped cement his status as one of world cinema’s all-time greats.
Of course, Leung was hardly an unknown quantity the first time he worked with Kar-wai on 1990’s drama Days of Being Wild, but he was still firmly in the ‘rising star’ category. Seven years and a little over a dozen features into his career, it was clear he had potential, but he was still seeking the roles to elevate him to the next level.
Coincidentally enough, he found both of them in the same year, with Leung also appearing in John Woo’s Bullet to the Head, a director he’d reunite with two years later for the action classic Hard Boiled. It would be another four before he was directed by Kar-wai again, but when he was, Chungking Express was well worth the wait.
Historical epic Ashes of Time and turbulent romance Happy Together reiterated that the pair were a match made in filmic heaven before their fifth picture allowed Leung to deliver arguably the best performance he’s ever given in In the Mood for Love, which saw him become the first actor from Hong Kong to win a ‘Best Actor’ prize at the Cannes Film Festival, where the movie competed for the Palme d’Or.
2046 allowed them to round out the spiritual trilogy that began with Days of Being Wild and continued through to Chungking Express, with 2013’s martial arts biopic The Grandmaster rounding out their seminal seven-film streak. Individually, Kar-wai and Leung are lauded among the best of their respective disciplines, but together, they were something else entirely.
“I think that the way Kar-wai works is that he wants people to stimulate him. To inspire him,” Leung explained to Filmmaker Magazine of their dynamic. “He gives a lot of freedom to everyone on the set. Not just the actors, but all of the crew. Our relationship is very strange. We never talk on the set. He’ll just give me a little hint, a little clue, at the very beginning. I start off knowing very little. We develop everything on the set, as we shoot. What I know at the very beginning is just my character.”
Kar-wai gives Leung the bare minimum when they start a production and implicitly trusts his actor to rise to the occasion. Looking at the results, it’s hard to argue with that approach. The star admitted that “he will not give you a specific direction,” allowing him to do whatever he wants with the character. It’s a challenge that many would find daunting, but based on Leung’s body of work, there are few more capable of taking such meagre directions and knocking the results out of the park.
Kar-wai hasn’t directed a feature since The Grandmaster, with his only directorial work in the interim the 2023 TV series Blossoms Shanghai, but if and when he does return to movies, Leung is very likely to be one of the first people he calls, which would delight cinephiles around the world should it happen.
