Chungking Express

I first watched Chungking Express on video back in 1996 when I was a student in London. The show left a deep impression on me as it was the first Wong Kar Wai movie I watched and recently, I decided to watch it again. The movie stars Brigette Lin (Lin Ching Hsia), Faye Wong, Tony Leung Chiu Wai & Takeshi Kaneshiro & is directed by Wong Kar Wai in 1994. It comprises two stories, shown back to back.

The first story sees Takeshi Kaneshiro playing an out-of-luck-in-love plainclothes cop who was dumped by his girlfriend on 1 April (April Fools' Day). He waits for a month to see if it was a joke she has played on him and decides that if after a month, she does not return, it is like the expiry date found on tinned food. He eats a tin of pineapples a day for a whole month, every tin being one that expires on 1 May, before he decides to move on. In the meantime, Takeshi goes to his regular snack joint, The Midnight Express, where the owner tries to get him to date one of his staff after learning that he (Takeshi) has been dumped. He meets a lady in a blond wig, played by Brigette Lin, in a bar called Bottoms Up, who is trying to survive in the seedy underworld of drug trafficking when a deal goes sour.

In the second story, which centres around The Midnight Express snack bar, Tony Leung plays a uniformed cop who goes to The Midnight Express and often orders the usual fish and chips for his girlfriend until one day he orders something completely different. When the owner of the snack bar asks him why, he claims it is because his girlfriend has already left him. Over time, the owner's assistant, played by Faye Wong, has fallen for him in secret and goes about doing things for him without his knowledge, such as cleaning his house when he is not in. She manages to do this as she stumbled upon a set of keys returned to him by his ex-girlfriend. When Leung realises that she has been the one who has entered his flat to clean it whenever he is not around, he has fallen for her. Before they can embark on anything, she stands him up on a date. One year later, she returns, as a flight attendant, to find that he (Leung) has bought over the snack bar and intends to turn it into a restaurant.

The stories are not interconnected but what struck me were the visuals, colours and cinematography. I was greatly impressed with how Wong Kar Wai weaves the mundane lifestyle of various Hong Kongers with realism, and stylish art direction. The significance of the visuals show a certain sensitivity to aesthetics, yet retain their contextual relevance.