CINEMA: GAY AND GAUDY

As the major (virtually the only) maker of art films in rampantly commercial Hong Kong, Wong Kar-wai is a goad and a threat to his competitors. He releases a movie--say, the 1990 Days of Being Wild--and they release a parody, Days of Being Dumb. He uses a pensive voice-over narration in Chung-king Express; soon every Hong Kong film hero is talking to himself. He wins the Best Director prize at this May's Cannes festival for Happy Together, and within three months there's a movie (Those Were the Days) about a prizewinning director sent back to the '60s as punishment for never...