CHUNKING EXPRESS (1994)

Cops, killer, girls, pineapples, seedy bars, electrifying colours, drunken melancholy and then love. A collage of assorted human psyche. That’s Chungking Express. A modern masterpiece. Love stories can be like this. No hollywood machoness or bollywood nacha gana, Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express makes us probe deeper into the conscience of people in love. A Hong Kong you have never seen before but its already there, and you explore it through the eyes of this magnificent auteur. No it doesn’t show the extravangza but the turbulence.
The plot is simple. No you might feel so. But its not. Its deeply riveting like a plane on a journey to the soulful exuberance of the thing called life
It explores the life of two cops and their loves and the surrounding. Hong Kong looks bedazzled in the colour. The colour that bares it all. Everything is naked yet its decent.

The first cop, cop 223, He Qiwu portrayed by the charming and effusing Takeshi Kaneshiro can’t get over his lost love. He roams around the streets at night, catching criminals, trying to woo his lost love back and offcourse buying pineapple cans with the expiry date of May 1st. The reason is that he wants to see if his love expires or not. He gives himself 30 days. After the expiry date he has decided to move on. A very childish act but it brings out the vulnerability of the character, the pain he is going through. He buys thirty cans hoping that he would reconcile with his lost love on his birthday which incidentally is on the 1st of May. Point to be noted, his girlfriend’s name is also May. A deliberate co-incidence. Could be?
Brigit Lin, plays the mysterious woman in blond wig who nurses a drug deal gone bad. Yeah, she says, she is in big trouble. She finds but man who has crossed her. She fights off hired goon. She is strong but she is weak.
And on his birthday, He Qiwu meets her. After the debacle of eating 30 pineapple cans, he shrugs to the bar and promises to himself that he would fall in love with the first woman entering the bar. And that just happened to be woman with blond wig.
A conversation takes place. They go to a hotel room. They spend the night. No, they don’t have sex. They don’t even share a kiss. There is nothing between them. He Qiwu just sees the woman sleeping. Instead of kissing her he takes off her shoes. For a moment I felt, that’s it. That’s love. That’s what I want to feel someday.
Wong Kar Wai’s triumph lies in the fact that he can make small details so passionate. It just ignites your minds, refreshens everything that is around. It just takes you on a ride. You can see around if you are a bit alert. Yes, mind that binoculars.


The 2nd cop, cop 633 played by the brooding and neat Tony Leung suffers after he breaks from his girlfriend who is a flight attendant. He tries to be brave. He tries to be strong. He befriends a girl from the snack bar, earlier visited by He Qiwu, called Faye who seems just can’t enough of the song California Dreaming. Something platonic takes off between them. Faye has some feelings for 2nd cop 633.
As Cop 633 gets lost in his own world of myriad absolution, like talking to his stuff toys, his soap, who he feels have become very thin and needs to regain his confidence while Faye comes and plays and cleans his apartment in his absence. The scenes are masterfully shot, and for a while you feel like playing with her as well, getting lost in the gullible energy.
Finally, they get together. But she leaves him. She has her reasons. I keep the ending a mystery.

This movie has become a personal favourite of mine. I can give you ample reasons why I really like this movie. But I won’t. The best reason would be the style in which the love stories has been shown. Ordinary yet extraordinary. Lovable laughs. Yes the movie gives you that.

I really enjoyed Takeshi Kaneshiro’s acting but I think he was a bit overdone. But I really enjoyed his portrayal of a mute man in Fallen Angels, another Wong Kar Wai classic. Tony Leung, no praising him. He is fabulous. Dark and brooding, his face reflects the characters anxiety and angst. Look carefully, when he speaks to his stuffed toys or the soaps. That’s the it thing.
Faye Wong is mad. And she does it. Brigit Lin is lost. And she does that with ease.

My verdict. I am in love with this movie. There are some movies which can’t be deleted from your mind. This one is like that. I see it often. I just travel with the characters, I just try to get in their mind, I just try to be them. There is sadness, there is happiness. But you enjoy them all. Robert Ebert compares Wong Kar Wai’s style with Godard of 60’s and 70’s. I don’t agree. Wong Kar Wai has his own distinct style. His choice of background music just captures the mood while the cinematography woos you. Each and every shot is detailed and colourful. The colour captures the mood of the characters.

I give this movie 10/10. I may be biased. But this movie has taught me to look at love in a different way. Yeah, no Hollywood chutzpah or stupid Bollywood masala, art house romance rocks. Wong Kar Wai has brought art-house romance to a new dimension. That’s it. So if you have not seen this movie then watch it once and go on dreaming California.