Chungking Express

The first Wong Kar-Wai movie to make an impression on North American audiences (the Miramax release was sponsored by Quentin Tarantino), Chungking Express is a fast, fluid, almost throwaway picture set in contemporary Hong Kong’s edgy Chungking Mansions district, and comprising two simple, short story-like through-lines, both involving forlorn policemen. In the first, Takeshi Kaneshiro makes an arbitrary promise to himself to find a new girlfriend before the expiry date on a can of pineapples. Then there’s Tony Leung, who becomes a project for Faye Wong who works at the noodle counter he frequents, and who takes it upon herself to clean and redecorate his apartment without his knowledge.

It was this fast, relatively small film that made Wong’s name in the West. After the studied inertia of Days of Being Wild, Chungking is a frenetic visual blur that’s been likened to an action painting. The rogue Australian cinematographer Chris Doyle does groundbreaking work here. Still the prevailing tone is wistful melancholy, whimsical and poetic: even a cop’s ragged dishcloth joins in the tears.

This is what Godard movies were once like: fast, hand-held, funny and very, very catchy.

Tony Rayns, Time Out

Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express is as fresh as falling rain, a pair of love stories full of pain and humor.

Kevin Thomas, LA Times

Chungking Express gets by and gets off on sheer innocence, exuberance, and cinematic freedom, a striking triumph of style over substance that give life to the grunge and chaos at the heart of contemporary Hong Kong.

Joshua Klein, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

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