Chungking Express | 1994
Brigitte Lin and Takeshi Kaneshiro in CHUNGKING EXPRESS. Courtesy of Janus Films.
In her 2008 essay "Chungking Express: Electric Youth" (included as an extra in the booklet of the Criterion Blu-Ray), critic Amy Taubin compares Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express to Jean-Luc Godard's seminal 1966 film, Masculin Feminin. It's a perceptive parallel, acknowledging both films as quintessential products of their time in depicting youthful romance and disaffection.
I'd argue that Chungking Express emulates other Godard films like Band of Outsiders just as much. There's an effortless sense of cool to what Wong is doing here - as his characters drift in and out of the film and in and out of love. His repetitive use of music recalls early Godard as well, turning classics like The Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'" and Dinah Washington's "What Diff'rence a Day Made" along with newer Cantonese covers of songs like The Cranberries' "Dreams" into the stuff of wistful romantic daydreams.
At its heart, however, Chungking Express is a modern film noir. You have two cops, each recovering from a breakup, each enamored with a mysterious and unattainable woman. Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is pining for a former love, setting the arbitrary deadline of May 1 for her to come back to him. He collects cans of pineapple that expire on that date as a countdown to remind himself that the time to let go is fast approaching. Meanwhile, he begins to fall in love with a gangster in a blond wig (Brigitte Lin) as May 1 quickly approaches. Cop 663 (Tony Leung) is likewise infatuated with a flight attendant (Valerie Chow). Still, he soon meets Faye (Faye Wong), an enigmatic server at a local take-out restaurant, whose return infatuation leads her to take an unconventionally central role in his life.
Wong directs the film like a modern noir, a fact made more palpable by the somewhat controversial 4K restoration, which darkens the images and warms the color palette. And while crime elements are present in the film's first half, a palpable sense of melancholy and ennui drives it forward. These are essentially lost souls bumping up against one another at a dingy take-out. Wong isn't particularly interested in creating a conventional plot, but Chungking Express is more than just vibes. There's an undercurrent of anxiety at work here - disparate people looking for connections, for belonging. They feel unsettled in the world as it is - the future unknown and heavy. For a film made in Hong Kong in the last days of the British mandate before being turned over to China - there's certainly a wider sense of uncertainty in which it exists. Yet the lonely lovelorn characters persist, cops and their proto manic pixie dream girls, always fixated on something unattainable and missing the beauty before their eyes. Thankfully, that beauty is not lost on audiences, and Chungking Express continues to beguile and enchant some 30 years later, a haunting portrait of timely and timeless longing.
