This year, the big buzz at Cannes is that its golden boy director, Wong Kar-wai, will be premiering a remixed, rescored and re-edited version of his 1994 martial arts masterpiece, Ashes of Time. Exactly twenty years ago, in a Hong Kong movie theater, Andy Lau kissed Maggie Cheung and Wong Kar-wai took the first step down the road that leads to where we find ourselves now. It wasn’t an auspicious start. The kiss took place in a Hong Kong version of Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets called As Tears Go By, a low budget movie that was Wong’s directorial debut. Previously he was a lowly freelance screenwriter, author of films like Haunted Cop Shop 2: Electric Boogaloo. Andy Lau took the Harvey Keitel part – it was only one of the hardworking pop star’s ten screen performances that year. Jacky Cheung had been discovered four years previously in an amateur singing contest and his career had been all flops ever since. His first album had done well but his other albums had bombed and the babyfaced young actor was hitting the bottle hard. He was cast in the Robert DeNiro role, a big step up from taking the second banana role in both Haunted Cop Shop flicks. Maggie Cheung, a beauty pageant winner then best known as a bit of fluff who played Jackie Chan’s onscreen girlfriends, was cast as Andy’s love interest.

Maggie plays a good girl from the outlying islands, Andy plays a street thug, and they’re both too emotionally constipated to admit their growing attraction. Then, about halfway through the movie, he goes to catch the ferry back to Hong Kong and she has a change of heart and races back to the pier only to find his ship has sailed. She turns to go, but out of nowhere he races up, grabs her arm, and pulls her into a phone booth. As Sandy Lam’s Cantonese cover of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” swells on the soundtrack they practically tear each others’ clothes off. They kiss hungrily, the music swells and the phone booth’s fluorescent lights burn brighter and brighter until the entire screen sears white. It was the world’s first Wong Kar-wai moment.

There would be many more to come in the six movies he made over the next ten years, from 1988 until Hong Kong’s handover in 1997. In Chungking Express Faye Wong sang a cover of the Cranberries’ “Dreams” as a lovelorn cop sipped coffee in slow motion while the world hurled itself around him in fast forward (this moment has been altered on the Miramax DVD available in the US and the scene plays in silence). In Days of Being Wild Tony Leung slicks back his hair and dresses for a long night of breaking hearts to a Xavier Cugat cha cha beat. Frank Zappa’s satirical “I Have Been in You” is transformed into the world’s saddest break-up song as a slaughterhouse is hosed down in Happy Together. And Fallen Angels ends with two previously unconnected characters sharing a motorcycle ride home after an all-night session of brawling and instant noodles. As the Flying Picket’s cover of “Only You” swells on the soundtrack the bike emerges from the Cross Harbor Tunnel, a puff of cigarette smoke rises up to meet the Hong Kong skyline and the two tortured souls enjoy one blissful moment at 65 mph.

These perfect pop moments were precious because they were so fragile. Wong’s movies reminded us that pop songs let us escape the world for a place where emotions are stronger, colors are brighter and everyone can say exactly how they feel, for three minutes at a time.

Don’t miss the last three days of As Tears Go By playing at Cinema Village until Thursday, May 15.

(Showtimes here)