Poaching

A large body of commentary exists on Wong Kar-wai’s modus operandi. His improvisatory shooting style and inability to settle on a final version have duly been noted. Chapter 2 considers a working habit of his that has escaped scrutiny: the retooling of music from other films, ranging from prerevolutionary Chinese melodramas to art-house darlings. Wong’s recycling of the music from such films as Tony Scott’s Top Gun (1986) and François Truffaut’s Confidentially Yours (1983) points to the mutual implication, in his oeuvre, between musicophilia and cinephilia. Lifting music from another film does not make it the vehicle of intertextual associations, however. The distance from the model is often such that it makes intertextual resonances difficult, if not impossible, to register. Wong’s use of preexisting soundtracks is a transfiguration into artistic practice of a distinctive expression of Hong Kong’s famed re-export economy: the repackaging of imported goods as if they were its own.