Chungking Express

Love you for 10,000 years

Directed by Wong Kar-Wai

Hong Kong, 1994

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I've been for a walk
On a winter's day
I'd be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.

California dreamin'
On such a winter's day

Whether you recognise this lyric or not, California Dreamin’ by The Mamas and the Papas will stick with you for a while after watching this week’s visually stylish and deliriously sexy film. Wong Kar-Wai is known for making films that have a dream-like ambience, populated by characters who are often alone but full of longing. Chungking Express is one such film, self-consciously playful, but at the same time this writer-director is serious in his intention to challenge our notions of time and memory. If you read our review ‘In Praise of Slow Cinema’, you will recall the emphasis of directors like Tarkovsky on the mastery of time. Chungking Express is in no way slow but there is poetry in the way that Wong Kar-Wai guides the rhythms and cadences of his film.

Released in 1994 Chungking Express is one tale of two stories, both with the same basic plot: an anonymous cop (only identified by his number) is struggling after being dumped by his girlfriend, then falls in love with a new woman. As simple as that… but also much more complicated.

We start with Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who has been jilted by the never-to-be seen May on April Fools’ Day. Pining for her he makes the eccentric decision to eat a can of pineapple with an expiry date of May 1st – every day until he reaches that date, which happens to be his birthday. If he doesn’t hear from her by then their love will expire. This doesn’t sound too hopeful, but while drowning his sorrows in a bar he encounters a woman disguised in a blonde wig and sunglasses. 223 promptly decides he will fall in love with her. Unbeknownst to him she’s a fugitive drug dealer (Brigitte Lin) who following a betrayal is now on a mission of revenge. The couple spend the night together in a hotel room, but their attachment goes no further than 223 polishing her shoes while she sleeps. That seems to be enough for him and when May 1st finally arrives, she sends him a birthday message on his pager (this is 1994 remember – no smartphones).

223: Now I’ll remember her all my life. If memories ever come in a can, I hope that can never expires.

Shortly afterward Cop 223 bumps into Faye, a quirky, attractive waitress played by Faye Wong, working at the Midnight Express café. His voiceover tells us:

At the high point of our intimacy, we were just 0.01 cm from each other. Six hours later she fell in love with another man…

California Dreamin’ is playing on the radio as a few hours later Cop 663 (Tony Leung) arrives and orders a salad. Faye watches him and as predicted falls in love. In contrast to the first story which takes place over hours, here the romance seems to run over days or even weeks. In yet another peculiar decision, rather than asking 663 out on a date Faye manages to get hold of the keys to his apartment and not only starts hanging out there but cleans it up and changes the furniture. He doesn’t seem to notice. They certainly make an odd couple: 663’s taciturnity plays against Faye’s wacky extrovert, but opposites attract and they have a great chemistry.

So in Chungking Express we have two lightly interwoven love stories, linked with cross references and parallels, but one a noir-ish thriller, the other a romantic comedy. Two genres, shot in contrasting visual styles: the first full of chases, episodic gangster violence, rapid cuts in the editing. The characters themselves are quick thinking, making impulsive decisions. In the second the action slows, shots are more drawn-out; the cop’s and waitress’s routines are repetitive, allowing both time for contemplation.  

It comes as no surprise to find that, due to a serendipitous case of conflicting schedules, Wong Kar-Wai used two cinematographers for the film: Andrew Lau for the first episode and Chris Doyle for the second. Markedly different styles, but both freewheeling in their use of the camera: trippy visual effects with freeze-frames, blurred focus and the celebrated time-lapse shot where 663 waits for Faye in a bar – two characters in slow motion while the world passes by at lightning speed.

Chungking Express has something of the French New Wave spirit. The jumpy, handheld style and the chaos of living in the cramped urban spaces of Hong Kong bring to mind Jean-Luc Godard’s Paris of À bout de souffle. It is also a very funny film. There are laugh-out-loud moments watching our blonde drug-dealer struggling to manage her pack of South Asian drug mules – also a pointed reminder of the exploitation of foreign workers in this temple to capitalism. This plays against the screwball dynamic of 663 and Faye, harking back to the 1930s with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Bringing up Baby. And what a soundtrack: as well as The Mama and the Papas, we get Dinah Washington and Faye Wong sings a Cantonese cover-version of the Cranberries’ Dreams*.

The Midnight Express café is a liminal space of transition. People come and go, they meet or just miss each other, relationships begin and end. California Dreamin’ is a paen to escapism, flight to a place of safety and warmth - and airports, flying and planes are conspicuously placed throughout the film. The question is do you really need to take off to find happiness? So Chungking Express is an artful film bristling with moments of magic, a film about love. Is it fleeting or enduring? Only time will tell.

Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees
And I pretend to pray
You know the preacher like the cold
He knows I'm gonna stay

California dreamin'
On such a winter's day

Reids’ Results (out of 100)

C - 82

T - 84

N - 80

S - 87

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We were pleased to find we have a bunch of new subscribers this week. You will note that to call our film selection eclectic would be rather an understatement. But ReidsonFilm would like to think there is something here for everyone so do explore our archive. Here’s a selection:

Upstream Color … like Kill List on crack

What am I watching? Is this real?

Her performance is so arch she almost backflips off the screen

Miss Havisham on Acid

*And do check out the ReidsonRecord playlist:

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For all our regulars, thank you for your support and do keep on reading.

Coming next… Late Spring(1949)