Chungking Express (Chung Hing sam lam)
Released in 1994, Chungking Express is one of Wong Kar-Wai’s best-known films, and provides a good introduction his cinematic style. Following on from the director’s first masterpiece, Days of Being Wild, the film explores themes of isolation and despair in the big city, and an escapist desire captured in the song “California Dreaming” which is played repeatedly throughout the movie.
The film revolves around two Hong Kong cops, both of whom wander the city, haunted by memories of lost love. Their stories are told separately, one following the other, and they cross each other’s path only fleetingly. In the first, Taiwanese policemen He Qiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) remembers a former girlfriend by collecting tins of pineapples that expire on the 1st of May, a month after she left him. “I wonder if there’s anything in the world that won’t expire,” he muses. One night, Qiwu becomes transfixed by a mysterious blonde-wigged woman he meets in a bar who drags him into the seedy underworld of Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions, a labyrinth of fast food stalls, market places and squalid guesthouses. Christopher Doyle’s frenetic camerawork captures perfectly the restlessness of this neon city, weaving in and out of noisy streets and dingy corridors in a frenzied sequence of colour, light and action.
The second section depicts the bizarre, but charming, relationship between heart-broken policeman number two (”Cop 663″), played by Hong Kong heartthrob Tony Leung, and a kooky tomboy named May (Faye Wong) who works at the Midnight Express fast-food joint. Wong, who rose to fame as a pop star in her native Hong Kong, also sings a Cantonese version of The Cranberries’ “Dreams” which plays over the closing credits. At this point, the film adopts an altogether lighter, more playful tone than its first half, which takes place almost entirely at night. Wong is delightful as the ditsy would-be rocker who expresses her love for the policeman by secretly redecorating his flat when he is away.
Considering all the main characters share a common sense of loneliness and ennui, Chungking Express is a surprisingly uplifting film. Wong deliberately keeps us at an emotional distance from his characters whilst letting us in on their amusing foibles. Bored and lonely, Qiwu rings up long-forgotten contacts in hope of a date, addressing each girl in a different language. “663″ is so sad that he speaks to his dishcloth. It’s that paradox of urban anonymity - you know where your neighbours shop, what car they drive, what music they listen to, when they go to bed, but that collection of abstract facts never materialises into a soul.
