Chungking Express (1994)

Director: Wong Kar-Wai
Writer: Wong Kar-Wai

Set in Hong Kong, Chungking Express comprises two tales tenuously tied together via the Midnight Express lunch counter. The first segment centers on He Qiwu, Cop No. 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a heartbroken policeman. His girlfriend, May, broke up with him on April Fool's Day and he's giving her one month to let the joke play out. In the mean time, he buys a can of pineapples – her favorite fruit – everyday with the expiration date of May 1; his birthday and the one month cut-off point. This story is intercut with the story line of the woman with whom Qiwu will fall in love, a blond wig-wearing drug runner (Brigitte Lin). The story then shifts to Cop No. 663 (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), whose flight attendant girlfriend leaves him. The new Midnight Express counter girl Faye (Faye Wong) intercepts a "Dear John" letter for No. 663 (including an apartment key) and proceeds to rearrange his apartment while he's on duty.

I've only recently gotten into Asian cinema and I am not very well versed in their major filmmakers or even an essential canon of films. I've seen a couple Akira Kurosawa films, some J-horror, and a couple films by Ang Lee, but other than that, I'm pretty new to this game. However, Chungking Express is one of the single-most enjoyable movies I've seen in a long time. Period. There is a feeling of frenetic energy in the film, from the handheld camera to the use of natural light – which tends to be from the neon signs. The stories are compelling in their quirky honesty. Qiwu's musings on canned pineapples, love, and expiration dates is incredibly bittersweet. The way No. 663 talks to his household objects (e.g. a bar of soap, a dish rag, a giant stuffed bear, etc.) softens his otherwise stiff persona. However, the real show stealer here is Hong Kong pop star Faye Wong. She has a bubbly Audrey-Hepburn-meets-Amélie quality about her that makes her almost painfully endearing. Her adventures in No. 663's apartment and his inability to notice the changes she makes add to the film's offbeat charm. The fragmented narrative is the only unsettling element of the film but this speaks to the relationships people have in a large city. This metaphor is represented in a line repeated in two voice-overs, "That was the closest we ever got: just 0.01 of a centimeter between us." Herein lies one of the few moments of cynicism of the film: the characters get close physically but ever close enough emotionally to make a connection.

Overall, I identified most with the two cops in the film. From a gender studies point of view, Kar-Wai uses them to show the vulnerability men feel in a severed relationship. Generally, in romantic comedies, women are shown as hurting and holding on, however irrationally, to the hope that that lost lover might just come back. Here, the men are the ones feeling loss, what Charlie Brown once summed up as, "Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love."

On a related side note, Wong Kar-Wai originally intended Chungking Express to have three stories. The third, deleted story became a separate companion film: Fallen Angels. Most of the film concerns a hitman and the woman who sets up his assignments, but is softened by the secondary story of young mute man and the manic, heartbroken girl he tries to help. Fallen Angels is a darker, more pessimistic look at love and metropolitan relationships. The films work well independently but add depth to each other when viewed as two thoughts on the same subject.