Meet Wong Kar-wai!

Rob Daniel popped along to the National Film Theatre in London to meet Wong Kar-wai, whose first English-language film, My Blueberry Nights, opened the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

Wong Kar-wai is a tall guy. Most photos show him nonchalantly slumped in a director's chair, trademark shades on whatever the light conditions (thankfully he has Chris Doyle or more recently Darius Khondji on hand for those visuals), so you can't gauge just how tall he is.

But, Wong stands a lanky 6ft, and it was this tall frame that strolled onto the stage at the NFT London on Thursday 24th May.

The appearance had been confirmed nary a week earlier with tickets selling out faster than Glastonbury. And yes, he was wearing sunglasses indoors, and managed to make it look cool.

Over 100 minutes, Wong and interviewer/friend/devil's advocate Richard Jobson traced the director's career from a writer on early cops and robbers movies to his recent Cannes-opener My Blueberry Nights, which is also Wong's first English language film (and hasn't survived the translation if some reports are to be believed).

But, this wasn't a night for recent rubbish reviews. Wong Kar-wai is the director of such classic films as Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love and the little-seen Ashes of Time.

In near fluent English he conversed on a variety of topics from John Woo and Martin Scorsese's influence on his debut movie As Tears Go By, to shooting in Argentina for Happy Together (the producers weren't pleased with the scuzzy locations he sniffed out) to his Kubrickian shooting schedules (In the Mood for Love shot for fifteen months, and a completely different film could be made from the outtakes).

Given that his films concentrate on loss, regret and wasted opportunities Wong himself was a convivial speaker, brimming with praise for his collaborators (actress Gong Li can "hold" the camera i.e., fix it with a look, for as long as you please without breaking character, Chris Doyle is cripplingly shy but drinks himself sociable), and showed no signs of fatigue after almost two hours talking.

Highlight of the evening must be the news that Ashes of Time's negative has been released from the vaults after years of legal wrangling, and Wong is currently re-mixing the sound, presumably for a re-release. Too long unseen apart from on a shoddily transferred Hong Kong DVD; this could be the year's most exciting news.

Keep this in mind if My Blueberry Nights really does put the why into Wong Kar-wai.