Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai finds success

The 48-year-old auteur, who this week becomes the first Chinese filmmaker to open the Cannes film festival with "My Blueberry Nights," his debut English-language work, has won praise for his visual style and sensual art films as well as a clutch of international awards.

Wong was the first Chinese director to head the jury at last year's Cannes festival and the first to win the best director award there in 1997 for "Happy Together", the tale of a strained relationship between two Chinese gay lovers living in Buenos Aires.

But it was his later film "In The Mood For Love," released in 2000, which earned him wider international plaudits. It was nominated for a Palme d'Or at Cannes and went on to earn some 2.7 million dollars at the US box office.

Despite global recognition, Wong's films are not box-office hits back home, where the media prefers to dwell on his reputation for being eccentric and laborious, working without a script or sometimes even a plot outline.

"Wong Kar-wai's films aren't box office hits here because they don't suit the taste of the Hong Kong people. Most of the movie-goers are attracted to commercial movies with strong visuals," film critic Lam Keeto said.

"The mainstream audience in Hong Kong don't understand the deeper meaning of his movies. Some of them would even find it boring," he said.

Born in Shanghai, Wong moved to Hong Kong when he was five. Despite no formal training, he enrolled in a television drama training programme after graduating from a local college in graphic design in 1980.

He later worked as a production assistant before becoming a TV scriptwriter.

Wong made his directorial debut in 1988 with "As Tears Go By" which was shown in Cannes. His 1990 follow-up "Days of Being Wild" regularly tops local critics' polls of the best films ever made despite being a financial failure.

International praise was heaped on the 1994 "Chungking Express", a quirky romantic comedy that Quentin Tarantino liked so much that he selected it as the first product of his Rolling Thunder distribution company.

Lam said Wong knows how to appeal to the Western audience with carefully crafted strategies.

"You can see Wong Kar-wai is very calculated in his market strategies -- in the whole filmmaking and in casting. He uses actors who appeal to the international market. His film scores are always in European style," he said.

Wong, who is always seen in his trademark dark glasses, is highly regarded for his ability to bring out the best in his actors, making international stars out of Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Maggie Cheung.

His partnership with cinematographer Christopher Doyle has been another key to his success.

"You can see how Tony Leung can have a mediocre performance with some directors but with Wong Kar-wai, he is very different," Lam said.

Former beauty queen Cheung won best actress at Cannes in 2004 for her role as a junkie rock star in ex-husband Olivier Assayas's "Clean".

Actors, however, temper their praise of Wong with frustration over his methods. After it took five years to complete the futuristic love epic "2046", which was shown at Cannes in 2004, star Leung described the process as torture.

Still, that has not put off multiple Grammy-award winner Norah Jones, who stars in "My Blueberry Nights," and Hollywood heavyweight Nicole Kidman, who will appear in "The Lady from Shanghai".