Wong Kar-Wai, “The Hand” (2004)

Wong Kar-Wai, “The Hand” (2004)

“The Hand” is Wong’s short film. Anthologized in the series “Eros,” it is a film about desires. Yet it is not nude bodies nor the explicit sexual relation between the two main characters that portray desire. Rather, it is their hands. Weaved into the interactions between the two main characters Xiao Zhang and Miss Hua is the adroit tailor’s hand of the former and the seductive, bewitching hand of the latter. As odd as it is to say that the hand represents the prime moments of desire, “The Hand” must be one of the sexiest yet saddest films I have yet to watch.

Whether it be the staircase up to Miss Hua’s apartment flat or her hotel room, Xiao Zhang climbs those stairs with a sense of devotion and excitement. Yet as he leaves her place, climbing down those same stairs, it is the bitterness of jealousy, frustration of his desires that he faces. As the tailor of Miss Hua, Xiao Zhang is for her no more than his occupation. He is not a human being with the same desires and affections as Miss Hua does: she doesn't mind making him wait, while she calls her boyfriends or has sex with her clients. Wong never shows her in the privacy of those moments; it is only Xiao Zhang we see—holding onto the package of her newly adorned clothes in his arms, waiting patiently outside her doors while there resounds only the sounds of moaning or the creaking of a bed. The satisfaction of her desires or her expenses we do not see; only the frustration of his desires and his anger seeing the woman he desires sleeping with a client for money. In their first interaction, Hua reprimands Xiao Zhang for his visible excitement after waiting outside her bedroom for the first time. She takes his stiff, cloddish hands. “You’ll be touching many women. If that’s how you are, who’d want you for a tailor?” He is to be invisible apart from what he has to do: taking measurements and sewing dresses for her. And that is what he does; it is only in the moments by himself he thinks of her hand: the way she must have delicately folded the dumplings, the way she must look in her dress he failed to deliver…

Yet this is not just a film about frustration. There are scenes where we seem to witness a genuine intimacy between them. For one, Xiao Zhang’s devotion to her is more than just his sexual desires. She loses all her clients; she weakens, deteriorates from the glamor she once possessed. Yet Xiao Zhang is the only person who stays with her. She calls him saying she plans to meet her last client which is her last opportunity to gain some sort of sponsorship. When he takes her measurement with his hands in her hotel room, we see the intertwining of their hands about her waist. Silent tears roll down her cheeks. Is she moved by him? He who stays beside her, who has not forgotten her? 

"Do you remember my hand," she asks. It is all she has now. 

Watch “The Hand”: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15165236/ 

Written 12 September 2024

HL from NC, U.S.A.