Metrograph

Wang’s wildly experimental, Nouvelle vague, punk rock, and hardboiled fiction-inspired indie noir follows a young man (Spencer Nakasako) who’s been hired to accompany a silver briefcase—its contents unknown—from the United States to Hong Kong, the city depicted as a neon-wreathed dreamscape populated by porno producers and other nefarious characters. Slapped with an “X” rating on its initial release for outbursts of violence and graphic sexuality, Life is Cheap… is the most transgressive and avant-garde work in its director’s filmography, a prime example of the electric creative energy of American independent cinema at the outset of the ’90s.