E-Mail This Article to a Friend Wild child Plus Sergei Eisenstein’s The General Line BY GERALD PEARY

When Hong Kong pop dreamboat Leslie Cheung plunged from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on April 1, 2003, few Americans took note of his suicide. But the Asian world mourned for the 46-year-old Cheung. An Asian-American wrote on her Web site: "The entire Asian diaspora knows that we lost one of our most exquisite pop singers, most seductive sex symbols, most potent gay icons, and most beloved celebrities." Called "the Elvis of Hong Kong," Cheung was an extraordinarily prolific singer — he made 90 albums — who stepped into a jaunty screen stardom of 60 pictures. At first, he appeared in machismo John Woo shoot-outs like Once a Thief and A Better Romance. But then he made a brave switch to overtly gay roles in such now-classic films as Farewell, My Concubine and Happy Together. What’s more, he came out in 1997, telling the world of his 12-year relationship with his financial manager.

In the revival screening of Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild (1991) that the Museum of Fine Arts is offering February 17 through 26, Bostonians will get another glance at Cheung at his most ripe and primal: a tantalizing young man eroticized by master cinematographer Christopher Doyle in the opulent style of 1940s Hollywood glamor photos. Oh, that bronze skin tone; oh, Cheung in a retro white undershirt; oh, Cheung narcissistically combing his ’50s-era locks. He evokes James Dean but also, I think, Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause dark-haired sidekick, androgynous Sal Mineo. Who in Days of Being Wild can compete erotically? The other male performers — Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung — are numb and expressionless. Even gorgeous, high-cheeked Maggie Cheung is pale, drab, and passive, appearing almost without make-up.

It’s 1960, the period of Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave classic À bout de souffle ("Breathless"), and there’s an obvious connection when Yuddy, Cheung’s small-time gangster, comes at Coca-Cola salesgirl Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung) in the brash, won’t-take-no manner of Parisian thug Jean-Paul Belmondo courting "Canary Girl" Jean Seberg. With Wong Kar-wai, we’re talking Hong Kong "Neo New Wave," and through much of his ’90s career (Happy Together, Chungking Express, etc.), he was, by choice, the moody, giddy, hyper-romantic, fatalist, fast-cutting Asian answer to Godard. Cheung’s Yuddy scores not only with Su Lizhen but, soon afterward, with a shrill showgirl named Mimi (Carina Lau). Mimi begs at all hours for his sexual and emotional attention.

How does he do it, beyond being so damned good-looking? Yuddy is a classic womanizer — he has such contempt for those he chases that he’s not bothered in the least if they reject him outright, or if, once the relationship is consummated, they’re wounded by his instant indifference. Yuddy’s problem, beyond a heavy dose of existential ennui, is his discovery that the woman he has believed to be his mother, a powdered courtesan (Tita Muñoz), was paid off to adopt him. He’s been lied to, betrayed by the only woman he’s ever trusted! Females must suffer!

There’s a great droll ending about 75 minutes into Days of Being Wild when Yuddy finds his real mother in the Philippines and impatiently struts away from her house. Unfortunately, the movie goes on for another quarter-hour, with weird plot turns in the rural Philippines and a seedy action sequence. Well, Wong has always had some wobbly moments in his movies. This one is more than saved by Cheung’s presence, and by the riveting scenes in bed.

It’s incredibly difficult to put two actors in a boudoir and have their gestures and conversation seem really right. Think À bout de souffle, Godard’s Le mépris ("Contempt"), Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde. The scenes of Yuddy mixing it up with Su Lizhen and Mimi achieve that level of screen intimacy.

SERGEI EISENSTEIN was struggling to make a film loyal to Leninist Russia with 1929’s The General Line (a/k/a The Old and the New), which screens this Sunday, February 13, at the Harvard Film Archive, with original piano accompaniment by Martin Marks. But when Lenin gave way to Stalin, an unhappy Eisenstein had to rethink and reshoot this homily made deep in rural Russia, a film demonstrating the need for peasants (primitive, red-state conservatives!) to collectivize their farms. This rarely screened Eisenstein effort is notable for, as always, the nonpareil editing, and for the mind-boggling daydream of his heroine Marfa (Marfa Lapkina), a forward-thinking peasant. In Marfa’s vision, a ghostly bull appears on the horizon and marries and then mates with a cow in a horny explosion of fast-cut orgasmic imagery.