Chungking Express (1994)

Written by Nick Da Costa | Friday, March 7, 2008 |

Absolutely batshit crazy, but visually exquisite film. Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express fuses elements of French New Wave cinema with a uniquely Asian aesthetic. There’s a cool here on display that no Westerners can emulate. The screen pops with double images, reflections, super charged frames of action, the background blurring as characters kinetically caress the cityscape.

The film is two stories of shoulder numbers; beat cops united by their failures in love, framed around a late night food stall; the Chungking Express of the title. And it’s a mood piece; there’s little real story here. It’s all whimsical and quirky brush strokes, preventing the story from dragging, but never giving us much in the way of engagement. True, keeping the audience at arms length does allow a certain confused melancholia as we strive to understand why moments bring such sadness to the characters. But through repetition this eventually frustrates rather than charms. Though weeping towels and tinned pineapple representing relationships is an ironic twist on love stories.

Of course feel free to take it as a mood piece. Like the classics from Godard mood can be a wonderful thing. Cinema is a style all of its own and in moments like this it’s a pleasure to experience. Seeing Wang twirl over and over to the strains of California Dreamin’ is to know a sense of freedom that hasn’t been seen so vividly since Seberg in A Bout De Soufflé. And very few will ever know it except in the folded darkness of film.

So just wallow in the arresting visuals of Kar-Wai’s regular DP, the manic drunk Christopher Doyle as he captures the beautiful Brigitte Lin walking from a murder scene, effortlessly disappearing into the pastel smeared blue of a Snow White shop front.

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