Chungking Express – Wong Kar-wai
Supposedly, director Wong Kar-wai made Chungking Express during a two month break from shooting another film. The result was an incredibly intentional film that blows the mind in every category from camera movements to details. Unless the viewer is schooled in Wong Kar-wai’s style of dispersing interrelated details throughout his films, it may be very hard to catch the parallels and intersections that make the film so amazing. This film is the first of three starring Tony Leung in the unofficial trilogy that also includes In the Mood for Love and 2046. All three explore the idea of unrequited love, with Chungking Express focusing on the alienation experienced in a big city. The film is divided into two loosely related stories, both centering on a male cop and their inability to find a human connection in the city.
Chungking Express is an inapt English translation of the title, literally, “Chungking Forest” in Chinese. The story begins in a densely populated area of Chungking that embodies the alienation that people might feel in a large city despite being surrounded by people. Wong Kar-wai accentuates the isolation by showing the language barrier between each of the peoples in the area. Among some of the languages heard are English, Cantonese, Japanese, and Mandarin. Brigitte Lin plays a mysterious woman in a blonde wig, the mastermind behind a drug smuggling deal gone bad when the band of Indians that she employs to transport the goods disappears with the money and the drugs. Her life intersects with that of Cop# 223, who recently split from his girlfriend, when both despairing characters meet in a bar. Cop# 223 eats a can of pineapples that expires on May 1, 1994 everyday. The date is his birthday, the one month anniversary of his breakup, and the “expiration date” for the wigged woman due to her grave mistake in the drug smuggling plot. Through the blurred images of the handheld camera shots at the beginning of the film, viewers can catch the two of them brushing shoulders in the streets, and a chance encounter between the wigged woman and Wong Faye’s character at the moment when Wong Faye purchases a giant Garfield (subplot in the second half of the film).
Wong Faye is introduced in the second half of the film the same way as the wigged woman, by brushing shoulders with Cop# 223. She is a new hire at the Midnight Express (the late night food stand that serves as the home base for both halves of the film). Her character May falls for Cop# 663, played by Tony Leung. While dating a flight attendant, he faithfully buys a chef’s salad every day from Midnight Express. When the flight attendant leaves him, the keys that she returns is left at the shop, and May takes it as her duty to redecorate Cop# 663’s apartment. There is a funny montage of Tony Leung talking to his household items as if they sympathized with his heartbreak; his bar of soap loses weight due to the break up, and his washcloth is forever crying (all of which are replaced by May). The two characters are never in the apartment at the same time, as if taking part in a bizarre contact-less courtship that concludes ambiguously.
Quentin Tarantino loved Wong Kar-wai’s style so much that he took it upon himself to promote this film. Though the jerky camera movements and blurry anxious scenes during the first half of the film are pretty ingenious, the picture is really hard to follow, giving the visuals a B. I give the film’s originality and story an A, due to the novelty of Wong Kar-wai’s telling two stories without actually showing where the stories go. The quirky acting seems inconsequential compared to the construction of Wong Kar-wai’s non-linear way of storytelling, giving it just a B-. Overall, Chungking Express only gets a B+, but that does not stop this film from being a must-see. Though most American audiences might not have to patience to sit through the disjointed plot, the ones who have the tenacity to last through this film will be duly rewarded by the joy of discovering stealthy intersections and hidden connections among the 4 characters behind the main action.
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