Chungking Express (Chunghing Samlam)

Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong, 1994, 102 minutes

Chungking Express was the first of Wong Kar Wais’s films to gain international plaudits but was actually made as a cinematic exercise to help him regain some perspective in the middle of editing a huge Hong Kong epic- Ashes of Time. The film, rightly described as a love note to Hong Kong, tells two different and unconventional love stories connected by having cops as heroes and a fast food joint named Chungking Express. Made with a down and dirty feel which probably reflects the production itself as well as the intended style we are brought into the streets of Hong Kong and the bustling effervescence of this city as only Wong can describe. The film uses voiceover to express the thoughts of the two male leads, and creates psychoses which Woody Allen would be proud of. Each story is told consecutively rather than being cut together giving a feel of two long vignettes rather than one film, in fact a third story was intended but was instead separated and used as the plot for a later film Fallen Angels which is worth seeing if you like Express.

An excellent cast includes the brilliant male leads Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro, both of whom you will recognize one from Zhang Yimou’s recent Wushu epics if from nothing else. The film also marked the debut of superstar singer Faye Wong who steals many scenes as a love-struck waitress and somehow manages to make an obsession reminiscent of Fatal Attraction into something adorable. These actors bring a heart and soul to a film which relies on our empathy with the characters to turn their self-pity into the undying love it always feels like to the person involved.

Few current directors’ names are dropped as readily as Wong’s and this critical appreciation is well deserved and seldom as exemplified as in Chungking Express.

Review by Peter Thompson
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2004

This is the film by Hong Kong's Wong Kar Wai which, although not his first major film in the West (having been producing films for the previous five years including the notable Days of Being Wild), was the seminal film which launched his career here.

Chunking Express is in two parts, a structure also used in his later film Fallen Angels (though in the latter through intercutting), featuring the stories of two lovelorn policemen who have, or think they have, been dropped by their girlfriends.

The first, Cop 223, is a detective who has just split with his girl. He goes on a pineapplechunk eating spree and meets a beautiful blond wigged woman in a late night bar. He fails to realise she is a double-crossed heroin smuggler who is running for her life after the operation she set up goes horribly wrong! The cop is oblivious to the whole thing and comes through it all, smelling of roses.

The second part features beat patrol cop 663, and the action takes place at a fast food bar in the city's equivalent of Soho. Here our hero thinks he has been dumped and fails to notice the new assistant has a major crush on him and that someone's been cleaning his flat, adding furniture, putting sleeping pills in his drink and adding fish to his tank - all in the guise of paying the gas bill! Much confusion, the Mamas and the Papas and peculiar oriental versions of Cranberries songs ensue. If this doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, there is indeed little hope for you.

The film has a frantic energy, and although (particularly in the second part) very little seems to happen - it does so beautifully.

Mr Tarantino is apparently a big Wong Kar Wai fan (not one to admit to Wong, I think), although this applies to the more gangsterish films like Fallen Angels. In this reviewer's opinion Fallen Angels fails to reach the heights of this film, and lacking Chungking's feel good factor, character development and empathy.

Wai has recently won a Cannes award for his new film Happily Together, but really this is still the shining light in Wai's wardrobe (mixing metaphors a bit there I think).

See and feel good about life for the rest of the week...

Review by Stephen J Brennan
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98