General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

The Hand (手) (2004 film)

The Hand (手) is a 2004 short feature by the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, running 56 minutes, about a shy tailor's assistant in 1960s Hong Kong whose life is shaped by a single intimate encounter with a courtesan client¹. It was first made as one of three segments of the anthology film Eros, alongside contributions from Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni, and Wong later expanded his segment into a stand-alone feature of nearly an hour².

Key fact	Detail
Director / year	Wong Kar-wai, 2004, Hong Kong¹
Runtime	56 minutes (theatrically released extended version)³
Origin	One segment of the three-part anthology Eros, with Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni; expanded by Wong into a stand-alone feature²
Cast	Chang Chen as Zhang, a tailor's assistant; Gong Li as Miss Hua, a courtesan; Tien Feng as Master Jin¹^•³
Setting	Hong Kong in the 1960s¹
Key crew	Cinematography by Christopher Doyle; music by Peer Raben, Claude Letessier, and Tu Duu-chih⁴
Language	Dialogue mainly in Mandarin, unusual for a Wong Kar-wai film²
Reception	IMDb audience rating of 7.3/10³

Spoilers

Story and style

Zhang (Chang Chen) is a meek dressmaker's assistant plying his trade in 1960s Hong Kong. His first client is Miss Hua (Gong Li), a celebrated and expensive courtesan; at their first meeting she seduces him so that he will truly remember her when designing her garments, and a rapport develops between the two over the years that follow¹^•³. Initially she enjoys a life of luxury, juggling several lovers, Mr. Zhao (Zhou Jianjun), a gigolo, and her nightclub job, but her fortunes later decline until she is left working as a prostitute out of a shabby hotel, with Zhang remaining in contact throughout².

The film is built on touch rather than explicit sex, which is largely absent after the opening minutes. Its eroticism runs through fabric and craft: Miss Hua makes phallic dumplings that Zhang devours while sensually caressing her clothing, and in one scene Zhang's character "makes love" to a new piece of fabric with his arm²^•⁵. Visually, the film sets Miss Hua's opulent flat, in which Zhang is invariably dressed in a suit and tie, against his shabby place of business, where he and his fellow workers wear vests while on the job.²

Origin in the Eros anthology

Eros (2004) was conceived as a triptych of short films on eroticism by three directors: Wong Kar-wai, Steven Soderbergh, and Michelangelo Antonioni². The anthology was poorly received as a whole; reviewers picked apart the Soderbergh and Antonioni segments, and Wong's contribution was widely judged the strongest of the three⁵. Wong then expanded his short into a medium-length feature just shy of an hour, and the theatrical release represents this extended version rather than the anthology segment²^•³.

Wong himself dated the idea to the SARS outbreak that interrupted his long-running production of 2046 in the spring of 2003. In an interview he recalled an emptied Hong Kong, taxis lined up with their lights on and restaurants vacant, and the repeated warning "don't touch anything": "I thought: perhaps it is time to make a film about touch, about how it can cause contagion. That is the idea of The Hand: not a film about SARS, but about the eroticism of touch."

Place in Wong Kar-wai's work

The Hand shares its hazy 1960s Hong Kong setting, its beautiful clothes and make-up, and its texture of fabric with In the Mood for Love (2000) and 2046 (2004), and reviewers describe it as an aesthetic and thematic extension of those films, forming a loose trilogy concerned with unrequited love and the longing for intimate connection²^•⁵. Gong Li also appears in 2046 of the same year, and her Miss Hua has been compared to characters from that film, such as Lulu (Carina Lau) or an older, more emotionally hardened Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi)¹^•².

Within Wong's filmography the piece is more linear than most of his films, and it is a rare one in which the dialogue is mainly in Mandarin². Critics have treated it as a minor but genuine contribution to his collection: the reviewer Eternality Tan called it "easily the finest" of the Eros trio and graded it B+, noting that it works as a counterpoint to the anthology's more salacious aims⁵.

Release and availability

The film is distributed by Janus Films and has been available for streaming on the Criterion Channel¹^•³. A restored 4K version, previously unreleased, circulated in Wong Kar-wai retrospectives, opening in French cinemas on 20 December 2023⁶.

References

The Hand, Metrograph
[The Hand [手] (2004), dianyingblog](https://dianyingblog.wordpress.com/2023/03/02/the-hand-%E6%89%8B-2004/)
The Hand streaming: where to watch online, JustWatch
手, film.at
Hand, The (2004), Eternality Tan
The Hand, ADRC

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026