Wong Kar Wai is back, but he's doing something he's never done before.The creative auteur behind In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express has created his first television series. Blossoms Shanghai premieres on the Criterion Channel on Nov. 24, with three new episodes dropping every Monday at 8 p.m. ET through January. We're about to get nearly 25 hours of Wong's signature visual poetry applied to the small screen. Wong's films have influenced everything from Lost in Translation to Mad Men. His work is instantly recognizable. He gives us saturated colors alongside an almost achingly unbearable romanticism.Blossoms Shanghai follows Ah Bao (the "Jay Gatsby of Shanghai") as he navigates the city's 1990s economic boom after the Shanghai Stock Exchange reopens.What makes this particularly personal is that Wong was born in Shanghai before his parents moved him to Hong Kong at age 5. While earlier films like In the Mood for Love and 2046 explored Shanghai culture through displaced characters in 1960s Hong Kong, Blossoms Shanghai is the first time Wong has set a project in his birthplace.In his statement about the series, Wong said, "The series captures the vitality of Shanghai's roaring '90s, revealing universal human truths about desire and destiny."The show reunites Wong with his frequent collaborators, including production designer William Chang and cinematographer Peter Pau. When it aired in China in late 2023, it dominated ratings.Directing episodic television presents unique challenges—very different from directing features—but Wong directed all 30 episodes himself, maintaining complete creative control over his...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Yesterday