chungking express (spine 453)

Chungking Express
Directed by: Wong Kar Wai
1994
Spine #453

“We broke up on April Fool’s Day, so I took it as a joke. I’m willing to humor her for a month. Every day I buy a can of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1, because May loves pineapple and May 1 is my birthday. I tell myself that if May hasn’t come back by the time I’ve bought 30 cans, then our love will expire too.”

The opening moments of Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express unfold in a balletic blur. The camera roams the congested streets of Hong Kong in restless, fragmented snapshots. The sense of spontaneity is palpable. Bodies are crammed so sardine-tight, it’s virtually impossible not to graze shoulders and limbs… and yet this is a movie about the fundamental struggle to connect. Wong’s vision is like a more nuanced version of the opening monologue in much-maligned Oscar winner Crash (“In LA, nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something”)… only in this case, nobody is actually crashing into each other; they’re just flitting in-and-out of each other’s orbit, leaving behind an amalgam of memory and dream.

Wong famously shot the film on-the-fly, with an uncompleted screenplay, during a two-month break from Ashes of Time’s torturous postproduction… and the end result is the fleetest entry in his esteemed filmography. The movie has the thrilling unpredictability of a director who’s in control of his material, but only just - at any given moment it feels as if the narrative could slip clean through his fingertips. The plot is bisected into two halves, only loosely connected yet spiritually entwined. The first follows lovelorn cop (and hoarder of canned pineapple) He Zhi Wu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who spends his nights moping over ex-girlfriend May near the Midnight Express snack bar. Kaneshiro, a veritable pop idol at the time, cuts against the grain of his inherent prettiness; he certainly isn’t afraid to to act the hapless goof (look no further than the iconic shot of him gazing morosely into space, cheek propped slackly on his palm). As he nears the May 1st deadline he’s put on the slim possibility of his relationship being resuscitated, Zhi Wu crosses paths with a mysterious drug smuggler in a blonde wig and red sunglasses (played by the great Brigitte Lin, in one of her final on-screen appearances, in an apparent nod to Cassavetes). Wong stages a literal genre mash-up, as Lin’s neo-noir gangster pic overlaps with Kaneshiro’s wistful relationship melodrama - a cinematic eclipse of violence and romance. Kaneshiro and Lin are basically two ships passing in the night and at first blush, the emotional payoff feels so slight as to register almost weightless. And yet, the sense of hopefulness is profound. “If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates?” Zhi Wu asks. “If so, I hope they last for centuries.”   

About forty minutes into Chungking Express, Zhi Wu returns to the Midnight Express stand and nearly collides with Faye (Faye Wong), its newest employee - it feels like a classic screwball meet cute, but Zhi Wu remarks “I knew nothing about her. Six hours later, she fell in love with another man” and promptly exits the picture, never to return. So begins the longer and more iconic section of the movie, which revolves around another unlucky-in-love police officer (known only by his badge number - 663 - and played by the incomparable Tony Leung) who recently split from his stewardess girlfriend. Faye, an idiosyncratic pixie who feels like the bridge between Jean Seberg in Breathless and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie, becomes quietly fixated on him… and, upon obtaining a key to his apartment, begins cleaning and redecorating on the sly (which might feel vaguely stalkerish, but this was the 90s, after all). Wong slathers the unironic whimsy on thick. He was almost certainly responsible for more than a few of the sort of interminable indie romantic-comedies that littered American cinema throughout the rest of the decade. And, if we’re being honest, one’s affection for the movie hinges heavily on a tolerance for Faye’s self-conscious daffiness. Like so many films of this nature, the narrative equation doesn’t quite balance out if you don’t fall in love with her… and I’ve frankly always found her a little more grating than charming (even though Wong, a pop starlet first and foremost, has a uniquely offhand cool - like a Calvin Klein model crossed with a young Zooey Deschanel - that went curiously underexploited on-screen). Chungking Express is perhaps best remembered for its director’s almost obsessive use of “California Dreamin’” by The Mamas & the Papas, which plays repeatedly throughout the second half… but it’s Faye Wong’s own Cantopop cover of the iconic Cranberries hit “Dreams” that leaves the more indelible mark. “Where do you want to go?” Faye asks. “Doesn’t matter. Wherever you want to take me,” 663 responds, as the song blasts over the closing credits in one of the more perfect endings you’ll ever be blessed to experience. For those whose outlook on love hasn’t been completely jaded, it’ll raise you up and make your soul feel momentarily star-kissed.