The Everlasting Beauty Of CHUNGKING EXPRESS

Wong Kar-wai once said that the main thing he acquired from filming 1994’s Chungking Express was joy. The film, as he described it, was more “expansive” and “airy” than anything he had directed up to that point and one could say it as a whole felt more free than his previous efforts. Conceived and shot in just six weeks, Kar-wai and his crew made Chungking as a sort of repose after the hellish filming of his big budget (but just as arty) martial arts opus, Ashes of Time. He shot the film with a crew of mostly unknowns (apart from the elusive Brigitte Lin, a massive star in Hong Kong cinema at the time) around the streets of Hong Kong and within the Chungking Mansions, former apartments for actors turned international hostels (one of which was the apartment of Director of Photography, Christopher Doyle, whose home was used as Cop 663’s in the film).

Adding to the franticness of the production’s history, Kar-wai has said that his strategy for the film was to write during the day and shoot during the night, pretty much developing the film as he went along, shooting in chronological order to support this method. A film like this, a fragmented romance shot unconventionally with a burnt out crew, should have been a disaster but with such a grandmaster (no pun intended) like Kar-wai as visionary, it’s no wonder in hindsight that what came out of this mess was one of the most beautifully authentic portraits of romance in any film and one of the great stylishly poetic ruminations on human connection the cinematic world has ever seen.

Fragments of Love

Chungking Express has two stories for the price of one. The first follows He Zhiwu (played by the understated Takeshi Kaneshiro), a lonely cop desperate for a connection after he is broken up with by his girlfriend, May, and the brief connection he makes with an unnamed underworld Hong Kong gangster (portrayed with a cold yet lonely slickness by Brigitte Lin). The second sees a freewheeling, young food server named Faye (the irresesitable Faye Wong) falling in love with the recently heartbroken Cop 663 (the great Tony Leung).

These two stories never interact except twice: first, briefly, as Lin‘s character stands outside a storefront as Faye walks out with a giant Garfield plush (truly a striking image), and at the very end of the first part, a newly spirited He passes Faye on the street, nearly bumping into her, recounting how this near collision of planets was just 0.01 centimeter away before the story shifts to hers. It’s a brilliantly understated way for these two stories to connect physically without it feeling forced or unnatural, just two people, both at the center of their own stories of heartache and love, nearly colliding before moving on.

With Love and Pineapple

From the first minute of celluloid, it’s evident that this film is going to move at its own pace and not stop for anything. It opens on a grainy, low-frame scene of Bridgett Lin walking down a busy Hong Kong street alone, it’s jazzy and borderline noir-ish. These moments of low frame rates (a trademark of Kar-wai‘s) do a lot to put you in the mindset of the film: these sequences cascade by like memories or daydreams and while they aren’t conventionally pretty shots, they are extremely beautiful in their own way. Kar-wai and cinematographer Christopher Doyle truly created their own world with this film, one that has exists in some strange land between the past and the future. No matter how many directors try to emulate this style, none of them nail this specific dreaminess and romanticism like Kar-wai and Doyle do here (and in subsequent films where these sequences are even more finely tuned).

In just a short time hanging out with He, we can understand exactly what’s going through. He calls anyone who will pick up as a way to quell his growing loneliness, he buys expiring pineapple cans that remind him of his recently ended relationship, and he generally does everything he can to attempt to mute his feelings of longing yet simultaneously holds on for dear life and refuses to leave behind a past that has clearly left him for good. Perhaps the most intimate symptom of his sorrow that Kar-wai focuses on is one that few if any filmmakers have ever properly dwelled on before or since: the sheer boredom that heartbreak can bring. We see He mostly bum around the bustling streets of Hong Kong, sitting in his apartment, and generally just haunting the avenues like a ghost because he isn’t exactly sure what to do with himself. He’s not exactly depressed or particularly dwelling on his thoughts, he’s just kind of ruminating and Kar-wai shows this in a very raw, unemotional way so we connect more with He and it’s incredibly effective. Everyone who’s ever gotten their heart broken can connect to this feeling of not being able to sit still, silently waiting and hoping for that call that says it was all a mistake and it’s time to get back together. But Kar-wai knows just as well as He does, no matter how much he is unwilling to accept it: that call will simply never come.

Perhaps the most greatest insight into He’s dizzying emotional state is a relatively small and quiet scene in which he interrogates the unfortunate sole who works at the convenient store where He is buying his despair-laced pineapple. The clerk, growing more impatient with each passing whine from He, tells him that they don’t sell pineapple that is about to expire, that that’s an idiotic thing to wish for and He gets defensive. “Do you know what goes into a can of pineapple?” he cries, “And you just throw it away!” This is a pretty humorous scene on the surface but it’s obvious that He is projecting onto the clerk his sorrows and miss-matched longings: the can of pineapple being a metaphor for his expired relationship and He trying to rationalize that something that took so much effort, time, and even love can’t just expire can it? But soon, He comes to terms with the fact that pineapple expires just as commonly as love does. “Is there anything in the world that doesn’t?” he contemplates soon after. This is perhaps the most understated scene in the entire picture and a great example of how Kar-wai grapples with longing in this film: with just enough levity for it to be a little melancholy but never outright depressing.

Things in Life

As many of cinema’s great despairing people, He eventually ends up at a bar where he meets a mysterious woman (Lin) and attempts to converse with her. She’s wearing sunglasses and a raincoat which He finds peculiar considering it isn’t sunny (it’s the middle of the night) nor raining. He asks her one of the greatest pickup lines of all time, “Do you like pineapples?” and she gives him the cold shoulder. He persists as he told himself he would fall in love with the next woman who walked in the door just as she did, another irrational idea by the recently heartbroken. This scene is very reminiscent of a 40’s American film noir, both in the femme fatale nature of Lin‘s mystifying performance and the moody lighting and Kar-wai‘s decision to put this young loner in such a scene is really a funny idea in description but it works so unbelievably well as it has a near dreamlike quality to it: as if He is imagining all of this play out within his mind as yet another way to grieve.

The night drifts by and Lin‘s character is nearly asleep on He’s shoulder, proclaiming she needs some rest so He and Lin‘s character end up in a spacious hotel room. In another film, this might lead to a sort of romantic or sexual awakening for both characters but Kar-wai was never one for clichés. Instead, Lin‘s character drifts asleep on the bed and He orders an excessive amount of room service, all the while pondering his sorrows. As day breaks, he goes for a run, presumably so there’s no water in his body “left for tears”. Right as he abandons his pager, perhaps a symbol for his retiring of the hope to move on, his pager beeps. “Love you for 10,000 years” he recites into it, the password he has said so many times before, a promise that turned out to be so untrue. A person on the other end tells him that his friend in his hotel room wishes him a Happy Birthday as it’s now May 1st. His love for his ex has officially expired but instead of giving into his sorrows for good, this simple message reignites a spark in him and he smiles. This seemingly minute gesture, this small act of human connection from someone he thought could care less was enough to move mountains. As the sun rises, it is clear that He is ready to move on and allow the sun to shine upon him once again and he is ready to open his heart for new connections that may come someday. Kar-wai has always said that his films are about chances and this scene shows that he doesn’t just mean that in a literal, plotting sense but in the way that giving time a chance and giving your emotions a chance can make all the difference in the world.

What A Difference (A Day Makes)

Another key to the bleeding heart at the center of Chungking Express is the unique way in which music is implemented and subsequently reimplemented to evoke certain feelings and memories or even to act sort of as themes for certain characters or locations. In the film’s first half, Dennis Brown‘s groovy Reggae tune “Things in Life” is played repeatedly in the lonely bar where He and Lin‘s character ultimately meet and it’s often hard to tell if it’s coming from the jukebox or a non-diagetic melody that Kar-wai and his editors inserted as a sort of theme song for this outcasted bar, where people come to forget about their heartbreaks and there are no windows to let in the punching reality of daylight.

Shifting focus to the second part of the film, one of the most famous parts of the picture is the repeated and loud use of The Mamas & The Papas‘ classic California Dreaming’ as a sort of idealistic distraction for the film’s characters, a reoccurring daydream about what could be in life, love instead of heartbreak, smiles for tears, the dirty subsections and bustling streets of Hong Kong for the romanticized Golden State on the other side of the world. In fact, we meet perhaps the most loved character of Kar-wai‘s filmography to this song as a young and irresistible Faye Wong blasts it at her workplace to “keep the feelings out” to the chagrin of her employer cousin. This catches the attention of cop and frequent customer, Cop 663, who is played with such heart by Tony Leung, truly one of the finest actors of our time.

The heartbreak of Cop 663 is different from He’s in that while He seemed to fixate on physical things that reminded him of his departed partner (pineapple, left stuffed animals, etc.), 663 ruminates more on specific memories. Chasing his lover around the apartment playfully, landing toy plans on her back after they make love, or her waving back to him as she takes the escalator outside their apartment to work. These brief glimpses back into memories, full of longing they are, are often scored and almost haunted by Dinah Washington‘s melancholic “What A Diff’rence A Day Made”, a pretty incredible short ditty about the wonderful miracle of falling in love, fast and hard, and how it can instantly change you for the better. One could see the use of this song as lightly ironic or comical but juxtaposing this to a lonely Leung trying to distract himself from the fact that his partner in crime left him because she got tired of the same old thing and needed to try something new, even as he started trying to be better with little acts of variety. “I thought we’d be together for the long haul,” 663 states in a state of gloom, “but we changed course.” Gosh, haven’t we all been there?

If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears

Faye Wong‘s electric eyes dart around 663 every time he comes around and it’s obvious from Wong‘s physical movements alone that she’s falling hard for 663 (who wouldn’t?). Eventually, by chance, 663’s ex girlfriend leaves him a letter for him at the stand since she knows he frequents there. Kar-wai could have done a whole conflict here about withholding information from a secret crush but of course, he went for something a lot more original, quirky, and romantic. Within the letter are the keys to 663’s apartment so Faye steals them discreetly and pins the letter to a board after 663 refuses it for now. “Some things need time to sink in” he says.

In his apartment at night, 663 copes by dialoguing with inanimate objects in his apartment (perhaps the most charming being a bar of soap) as a way to rationalize with himself the cost of his love and his current inability to move on. The way Kar-wai treats inanimate objects and locations, in all of his films, is really touching. He has a sort of reverence for them, especially apartments, and sees them almost as alive things, as people. This not only makes his most heartbreaking films feel a little less lonely but also goes a long way in breathing life into a location to the point where, as cliché as it sounds, they’re just as much characters as those with eyes and ears. Little does he know, that very same apartment is being cleaned by Faye by day (ha) as undoubtedly one of the most unexpectedly romantic gestures ever featured in a motion picture. We as an audience never get a clear reasoning for why Faye is doing this other than she wants to do something nice for the one she loves but the real magic is how never, ever does it come off as creepy, only completely and achingly sweet. Wong Kar-wai captures the littlest moments and gestures of love with a restraint and humanity that few other directors have ever managed to do and for the romantic souls of the world, that’s part of the reason so many of them keep coming back to his films again and again.

Every Possible Way

One day, after a few humorous close calls, 663 comes home and opens the door to Faye in his apartment. Charmingly, she screams and slams the door on him as he tries to calmly rationalize what’s going on. She comes up with some dumb excuse he doesn’t believe but she stays for a while and he comforts her since he gave her such a fright. A quiet moment of romantic tension occurs here, one that we expect to burst at any moment since this is what this entire section of the film has been building towards, if not the film as a whole. But Kar-wai‘s not ready for that quite yet and after they depart, they run into each other a few more times before an official date is made: they are supposed to meet at an establishment called “California”. The date comes and goes with 663 being stood up by Faye and he is left out to soak in the rain of his sorrows once again. Grief-ridden, he goes to the restaurant that Faye works at and her cousin tells him that she left, took a plane to a far off land but assures him that there are plenty of fish in the sea, plenty of the options 663’s ex-girlfriend talked about before she left. Before he leaves, the employer cousin gives him a letter that Faye left him before she flew away and 663 takes it and moves on.

Later, while at a convenience store, 663 runs into his ex-girlfriend who is there with a new biker boyfriend. They talk briefly with tension so thick that a scathing knife would be unable to penetrate it. She leaves him to pick up her bill and leaves him there to finish picking up the pieces of their faded relationship, one that’s only a memory now. As he leaves, he throws Faye’s letter in the trash for it to get drenched by the rainfall: his heart is broken and he doesn’t want to take the chance that it will ever get broken again. But this thought process doesn’t last long as he picks it back up and attempts to dry the soggy paper on a hot dog cooker in the convenience store to make out what it says and it turns out to be a makeshift boarding pass for exactly one year from that day but the destination is too water damaged to read. 663 moves on, silently holding on to this future date as a far off dream, a date far enough away for him to move on completely from the past and allow himself to love again. As it turns out though, Faye did go to the restaurant in California that night, she just went at a different time to beat the rush…

A year passes and Faye returns to Hong Kong, on the day she promised 663 she would, after a year of traveling and becoming a flight attendant (the same job 663’s ex had). She stops by the Midnight Express, her formal workplace to find the door closed and when she goes in she sees none other than 663 doing work on it. They catch up and Faye tells him how she went to the real California and she doesn’t find anything particularly special about it, as if Kar-wai is saying that dreams such as these are often disappointing once they come true but they make room in your heart for more meaningful ones, ones that are more true. Finally, 663 asks Faye if she’d accept the boarding pass and Faye asks where he wants to go. Just as “Dreams” by The Cranberries (or Faye Wong‘s gorgeous cover of the song) kicks in for the umpteenth time in the film, 663 replies with “Wherever you wanna take me” and the film cuts to black and becomes one of the most joyous, romantic, and defiantly heartwarming endings of Asian cinema.

No film in history has captured romance, change, and longing quite like Chungking Express does and it’s doubtful that any film ever will. Kar-wai shows loneliness as a comforting feeling, a feeling that we as human beings shouldn’t think of as crippling or isolating but one that happens to the best of us, the ones that gave it their best shot. While some of his other masterpieces like In The Mood For Love and Happy Together have a more dour and melancholy view of heartbreak, Chungking is a lot more gentle and life affirming, a lot more concerned with how we move on from heartbreak instead of drowning in the fallout of it all. The film teaches that the world is full of billions of people all looking for a connection and as soon as one connection ends, another is soon to follow because that’s just the way humanity is wired. We all need love and need to give love. And that universality of the film, how heartbreak is something that can be moved on from, is the reason Chungking Express will live on as one of the great romance films for as long as films are played. Kar-wai once said that he believes the characters of this film will be “forever young” but the same could be said about the film as a whole. Chungking Express: the film that will remain young and beautiful until the end of time.

Chungking Express is streaming on HBO Max and The Criterion Channel.

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