Between those peaks, Wong pushed Leung to extremes. Happy Together (1997) saw him as Lai Yiu-fai, a gay man stranded in Buenos Aires with an explosive lover (Leslie Cheung). Leung’s performance is raw and bruised — he works a slaughterhouse, hoards passports, and silently tapes his lover’s voice so he can sleep. It’s the most physical Wong has ever asked him to be, yet the most vulnerable.
Even their "failure" is fascinating. 2046 (2004), the spiritual sequel to In the Mood for Love , took five years to shoot. Leung plays Chow again, but now hollowed into a sci-fi writer who beds every woman except the one he’s chasing. Critics called it self-indulgent. But watch Leung: his smile now has a drawbridge that never lowers. He’s playing a man who has memorized his own heartbreak and recites it like a lullaby. It’s the masterpiece of a man tired of his own sorrow. tony leung wong kar wai
To talk about the cinema of Wong Kar-Wai is to talk about the architecture of longing. To talk about Tony Leung is to talk about the soul that inhabits that architecture. In the history of film, there are director-actor pairings that feel like collaboration, and then there are those that feel like a singular, shared nervous system. Scorsese and De Niro. Kurosawa and Mifune. Fellini and Mastroianni. And in the kaleidoscope of Hong Kong cinema, the prism through which all light is refracted: Wong Kar-Wai and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai. Between those peaks, Wong pushed Leung to extremes
In the temple of lonely cinema, their names are carved together, just above the whisper. It’s the most physical Wong has ever asked
Here’s a feature-style piece on Tony Leung’s collaboration with Wong Kar-wai: