Chungking Express (1994) Two tales of romantic woe in pre-handover Hong Kong

Wong Kar Wai's lively tale of lovelorn cops captures the uncertainty of a Hong Kong facing its own form of break-up.

Wong Kar Wai was in the final leg of a hellish production on Ashes Of Time. His historical epic required a lengthy, expensive and complicated shoot in the Gobi desert, an arid region in northern China and southern Mongolia. Almost two years into the project, locked in his editing room back in Hong Kong as he attempted to assemble the footage, Wong realised he desperately needed a break. He hoped he could reignite his creativity by shooting something else: a movie he could make quickly, cheaply and spontaneously in the city. This film would become Chungking Express, one of Wong Kar Wai’s finest achievements, and ironically far more revered by his fans than Ashes Of Time ever was.

Wong started shooting Chungking Express at the end of 1993 with a very loose script. All he really had was a concept: two heartbroken cops and one lovelorn assassin who are connected by their frequenting of the snack bar Chungking Express (the third part of this triptych was eventually scrapped and developed into a separate film, Fallen Angels, released one year later). The writing was only finished part-way through filming when production paused for the Christmas holidays (in fact, the second of the movie’s two stories was written in a single day during this break). Overall, it took a mere two-and-a-half weeks to shoot, enabled by its guerrilla style of working quickly without permits before the crew got caught by authorities.

In a film this impulsive it’s hard to believe anything is deliberate. Yet, the scrappy French New Wave stylings of Chungking Express marry perfectly with its setting of pre-handover Hong Kong to immerse us in the chaos of a region in flux. At midnight on July 1st 1997, 150 years of British rule was set to end and Hong Kong would become part of the People’s Republic Of China. The first story feels like a direct allegory for this: Cop 223, played by Takeshi Kaneshiro, is dumped by his girlfriend at the beginning of April and has given himself until the first of May (incidentally, also his birthday) to grieve this loss before trying to move on. It’s a tale of transience and uncertainty grounded in a very specific deadline.

As he roams the neon-drenched streets of night-time Hong Kong, gloriously shot by cinematographer Andrew Lau, who would later direct the acclaimed thriller Infernal Affairs, Cop 223 becomes fixated on cans of pineapples at his preferred grocery store which are due to expire at the end of the month. “When did everything start having an expiration date? Is there anything in the world that doesn’t?” he wonders as he consumes every can he can get his hands on. It comically speaks to Cop 223’s romantic turmoil, whilst reflecting the social and political anxieties of a region facing an expiration date of its own.

Cop 223 also becomes fixated on another girl: a woman in a blonde wig, played by Brigitte Lin, and known only as “the woman in a blonde wig”. The archetypal femme fatale of French New Wave cinema, she is part of a drug smuggling operation which goes disastrously wrong. Cop 223 meets her whilst she hides out at the infamous Bottoms Up Club, recognisable for its appearance in the James Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun, and they have a failed one night stand on the evening of April 31st. The next morning she pages him to wish him a happy birthday, and he becomes excited about the possibilities of the future.

The metaphor of expiring pineapples representing grief and evolution is a perfect example of the whimsical tone prevalent across Wong Kar Wai’s movie. This is something the film doubles down on in the second half, in which another police officer, Cop 663, played by Tony Leung, is similarly reeling from a failed relationship. Cop 663 has been buying Chungking Express’s chef’s salads for his girlfriend every night. One day, the owner encourages him to bring home something different. It not only broadens her gastronomic horizons though; she also decides she wants something else romantically.

Cop 663 has a secret admirer at Chungking Express named Faye, played by Faye Wong. When his ex drops his keys at the the titular snack bar, knowing that is where he can regularly be found, Faye endeavours to nurse Cop 663’s heartbreak by sneaking into his apartment to clean up. Cop 663 worries about the emotional wellbeing of the belongings his ex has left behind. He muses that their worn-down bar of soap has lost its appetite after her departure, and he believes his leaky kitchen is crying in mourning. As Faye’s renovation restores the apartment back to life, he enthuses that the newly replaced soap has put weight back on, and his mopped-up kitchen has stopped crying.

This second half of the film is decidedly less allegorical. It’s perhaps even less stylistically bold. With cinematographic duties handed over to Christopher Doyle, it loses the low frame rates and rapid camera movements of its predecessor and favours a more conventional style of shooting—or at least as conventional as you can get from the wildly inventive Doyle. In contrast to the first act, shot almost entirely at night, this one is mostly set in the harsh afternoon daylight too, which isn’t quite as aesthetically pleasing. It is more heartfelt and humorous though, reaching heights of pure cinematic nirvana when Cop 663 discovers Faye’s scheme to help him get over his ex, and in turn realises how she feels about him. In this second story, you get a real sense of just how freeing this experience was for Wong Kar Wai after the cumbersome production of Ashes Of Time. It’s a blissful romantic comedy.

The obvious joy that Wong Kar Wai experienced in shooting Chungking Express gives the film a sincerity, emboldened by earnest performances from all its cast. On paper, it all sounds rather precocious; crying apartments, anorexic soap bars and expiring pineapples that represent social change. But in his hands, these fanciful ideas authentically capture the feeling of losing logic, sense and reason as you fall in or out of love. And whilst its depiction of a globalised region facing an existential crisis is laced with melancholy, Chungking Express is ultimately an optimistic work, one that finds its characters aware of the ephemeral natures of love, identity and time but gazing hopefully towards an unknown future.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Directed by Wong Kar Wai. Written by Wong Kar Wai. Produced by Chan Yi-kan and Jeffrey Lau. Starring Brigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung and Faye Wong. Jet Tone Productions. Distributed by Rolling Thunder. 102 minutes. Hong Kong.