The Hand

Wong Kar-wai's segment of the three-part anthology Eros. The other two are by Michelangelo Antonioni and Steven Soderbergh; this is the one that was praised. Zhang is a young tailor's apprentice. His first client is Miss Hua, a celebrated and expensive courtesan, and at their first meeting she touches him; the whole film is the dependency built out of that single moment. As the years pass Miss Hua's clients thin out and her health fails, and the relation inverts: the man who sews her dresses knows the body he once measured only from memory. It is set in the same hazy 1960s Hong Kong as In the Mood for Love, with the same narrow corridors, the same texture of fabric, the same deferred touch. Gong Li plays Miss Hua and Chang Chen plays Zhang. Wong later expanded the segment into a version running close to an hour. Who it is for: anyone who loves Wong's 1960s films and thinks a short of them would be enough. Who it is not for: anyone planning to watch Eros whole. The other two segments fall far below this one, and the anthology never coheres.