The Hand (director's cut)

Gong Li and Chang Chen star in this hypnotic tale of obsession, repression, and class divisions.

Like In the Mood for Love, The Hand is set in the hazy Hong Kong of the 1960s, but its characters couldn’t be more different from the earlier film’s restrained, haunted lovers. Originally conceived for the omnibus film Eros, which included Equilibrium (Steven Soderbergh) and The Dangerous Thread of Things (Michelangelo Antonioni), the film — presented in this retrospective for the first time in its extended cut — tells the tale of Zhang (Chang Chen), a shy tailor’s assistant enraptured by a mysterious client, Miss Hua (Gong Li).

The Hand finds Wong Kar Wai continuing to transition from the frenetic, energised style of his earlier films into a register that is lush with romantic grandeur. On release, the critic Roger Ebert said of the film, “it stays with me. The characters expand in my memory and imagination.”