For a director that isn’t afraid to take his time between projects, I almost did a double-take at the news that Wong Kar-wai will begin work on his next film in 2015. From The Film Stage, Wong Kar-wai (In The Mood For Love, The Grandmaster) will be adapting a chapter from the short story collection I Belonged to You by author Zhang Jiajia. The chapter he will adapt translates to Ferryman, which follows an “affair between a girl and a married artist in Changchun”.
They also report that a top cast is being assembled (cross your fingers for another Tony Leung Chiu-Wai collaboration) and that the stories in Jiajia’s collection are all told in the style of a “friend narrating his tales to you in the middle of the night”, the style that Wong Kar-wai has mastered in his interpersonal storytelling. Nobody does romance quite like Wong Kar-wai, able to move past cinematic convention and get at the true emotions of romance with his unique style of cinematography and narrative plotting. Even in My Blueberry Nights, his most unloved film to date, within the first ten minutes he was able to emotionally tear apart my heart and get to a universal truth about unrequited love with Jude Law’s monologue about the analogy of his blueberry pie. Wong Kar-wai is one of the most interesting auteurs working, and Ferryman now sits atop my most anticipated films of the future. Hopefully casting will begin soon, and we’ll be sure to report on any updates on Ferryman.
Source: The Film Stage
