New 4K Restoration of the Director’s Cut

Four attractive souls, equal parts rich and working class, form a tragic romantic bond of ennui, anomie, absurdity, love, and violence in (Wong Kar Wai mentor) Patrick Tam’s genre-defying Hong Kong New Wave watershed. Wealthy Louis (Leslie Cheung) and his cousin Kathy (Pat Ha) hook up with Tomato (Cecilia Yip) and Pong (Kent Tong) amidst various urban antics. Harkening to Japan’s sun tribe trend of the ’50s, they mostly hang out and indulge in hedonistic pursuits until an ex-revolutionary shows up and sets the tone even more off-kilter. A transcendent example of cinema at its most freewheeling, this treatise on bohemian upheaval seduces with its garish rom-com tropes and avant-garde leanings, only to turn the entire affair upside down with wild plot twists and kinetic set-pieces. Omnisciently teetering between calculated camp and art house of a unique pedigree, this is an irrepressible must-see masterpiece.