Chungking Express (1994)
QFS No. 162 - The invitation for January 8, 2025
Happy New Year! We resolve to watch movies and argue about them in a constructive manner!
We last watched a film from the great Wong Kar-wai in 2023 with his In the Mood for Love (2000, QFS No. 105) – another favorite of mine. Now, if you have watched In the Mood for Love and found the pace a little too languid for your taste, I assure you that Chungking Express is vastly different on that account. It’s actually somewhat surprising that the same filmmaker made both films when you see them side-by-side, with Chungking Express flying a little more kinetically than the rhythmic, elegant pace of In the Mood for Love.
I first watched Chungking Express on what was likely a bootlegged VHS tape that a fellow AFI Fellow had obtained and snuck in a viewing at school back in 2000 when the film was not in wide distribution in the US. The film blew me away and that started my long, steady trek towards Wong Kar-wai becoming one of my favorite filmmakers of all time. And in case you like lists, Chungking Express is No. 88 on BFI’s Greatest Films of All Time list (In the Mood for Love is No. 5, incidentally).
Chungking Express is a film that fills me with joy, and I feel like we’ll need a lot of that this year – so why not start the year off this way? Join us in the discussion!
Chungking Express (1994) Directed by Wong Kar-wai
Reactions and Analyses:
What is it like to live in a city? A city, teeming with life, with people, with corners unexplored and places undiscovered. At times exciting, at times isolating, paradoxically producing loneliness amidst the masses. Serendipitous, concealing, frantic and sleepy all at once. In this, the city, Wong Kar-wai paints a poetic, chaotic mess in Chungking Express (1994).
Scenes of Hong Kong at night during the first half of Chungking Express (1994), the West and East colliding in this city on the eve of the handover back to China. The Woman the Blonde Wig (Brigitte Lin) almost disappears as if she’s one of the goods in the store.
The kinetic swish of running through the city at night.
Indians, Europeans, Chinese all collide in this little universe.
So often when writing or thinking about a movie or a television show, we use the expression “the city is a character.” In films where this is truly the case, the city has become more than a backdrop or a setting, but directly influences the characters’ decisions and actions. New York takes on this quite frequently, with probably Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) being the most clear example of this.
The neighborhood is more than just a place in Do the Right Thing (1989).
The city block in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) is not just a setting, but its very dynamic of race and class influences the narrative. You could argue that in John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood (1991, QFS No. 12), the protagonists’ Los Angeles neighborhood influences how they behave, what they attempt to achieve, how they try to survive. Rio de Janiero explodes to life in Walter Salles’ City of God (2002) and is as much an influencer of the narrative as any film about a place. Lost in Translation (2003) for Tokyo, Mystic River (2003) for Boston, maybe even Blues Brothers (1980) for Chicago - a place oozing with music at ever turn.
Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) in Taxi Driver (1976), the red lights of the city illuminating him.
Woman in the Blonde Wig and He Zhiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) illuminated by red light in the city tavern.
In Chungking Express (1994), Wong Kar-wai captures Hong Kong at a particular inflection point in history. On the eve of the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom back to the China, the city is a nation state, influenced by the West and the East, a crossroads but more than that. The ancient city is crisscrossed with oddities that span the old and the new – an outdoor moving walkway next to Cop 663’s (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) home, a cloth-covered vegetable market near the Coca-Cola adorned Indian food stalls. The cold iron and steel and neon of a city but the red and swish of color of fruit merchants and factory produced goods. The Indian goods makers, the Chinese shop keepers, the European drug dealer/bar owner.
One comparison that came up in our QFS discussion was Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and specifically its portrayal of a city. The time frame of Chungking Express and Slumdog Millionaire are different - Danny Boyle’s film takes place over the protagonists’ childhood into adulthood as opposed to the very compressed time in Chungking Express - but both capture a city at an inflection point. In Slumdog Millionaire, “Bombay became Mumbai” says Jamal (Dev Patel), which is to say a sprawling Indian city became an international megalopolis complete with wealthy homes and, to the main narrative point, fancy game shows. But it’s this moment in time, when slums are about to be turned into high rises and the messy city that grew up as a child of British Empire, Indian Kingdoms and Indian Democracy will accelerate into a new iteration. Hong Kong is similar, another child of Empire and an in between democracy, is on the verge of something new. It’s that energy that Wong Kar-wai so adeptly harnesses throughout Chungking Express.
The Woman in the Blonde Wig inadvertently extracts He Zhiwu from his melancholy.
But it’s not just the vibrancy of the city that concerns the filmmaker, but how a city influences the people who dwell within it. The men, Cop 663 and He Zhiwu, Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) are sad poets, so caught up in their own loneliness that they are unaware of something critical right in front of their noses. He Zhiwu doesn’t realize that the blonde woman he’s falling for (Briggitte Lin) is the very woman that his police force is on the search for after she went on a vengeful shooting spree. And Cop 663’s apartment life continues to improve, somehow, though he’s completely unaware an elf is the one doing the improving – Faye (Faye Wong), who is either smitten or just mischievous and craves a mission. In a city, she can slink through unnoticed among the masses, infiltrate 663’s home, and return to work without anyone being the wiser - just one of a million people on their own solitary task.
Cop 663 tries to inspire the inanimate objects around him or shares his disappointment in their recent performances.
The isolation the men feel in the city manifests differently for both men. He Zhiwu seeks out companionship actively, calling women he’s known – even ones he hadn’t spoken to since grade school or ones that now have children. He’s obsessed with an ex-girlfriend and buys cans of nearly-expired pineapples with her name, May, on it. Cop 663 communicates with his “community” of inanimate objects in his home after his air hostess girlfriend leaves him. He gives his wash rag a pep talk and expresses disappointment in his toothbrush. It’s the women, the connection of people accidentally thrust together in the sprawling metropolis that bring life to these men, that bring them out of their bad poetry and self-pitying.
Faye on her secret mission in Cop 663’s apartment.
And just as serendipitously as people intersect, they disappear. The Woman in the Blonde Wig disappears into the night, a freeze frame capturing a split second of her without her wig and her true identity. Faye stands up Cop 663, the swirl of colors becoming an oil painting as she disappears, only to return as a flight attendant, of all things – having made it to California of California Dreamin’ fame. The two reunite and perhaps, perhaps, the city has had a hand in curing loneliness.
Would these people have met had it not been for what a city can be, how it can push people together just as easily as it can obscure them? Hard to say, of course, but if you believe the city is a character - as it is almost certainly is here - then their fate is maybe not totally in their hands. It’s the unseen, alive presence of the urban world that has set their lives in motion.
Cop 663 now knows Faye’s been in his apartment and confronts her at her food stall.
Wong Kar-wai captures a city perhaps better than anyone else. You feel the sweat, the grime, the physicality of the place. The fluorescent lights of the soda shops, the interplay of shadow and light from buildings and cloths draped across alleys. The city is a character in many films but it is, arguably, the star of Chungking Express.
