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Chungking Express (Traditional Chinese: 重慶森林; Simplified Chinese: 重庆森林; pinyin: Chóngqìng Sēnlín; literally "Chongqing forest") is a 1994 Hong Kong film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Takeshi Kaneshiro, Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung, Faye Wong and Valerie Chow. The film is a sequence of two interlinked stories involving two cops in the city and their dalliances with a romantic encounter.
Tagline: If my memory of her has an expiration date, let it be 10,000 years... Historically, the number "10,000" was used to represent the concept of "forever" in China and many other Asian countries. (see Ten thousand years)
Plot outlineSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The movie comprises two different stories, told one after the other, each about a romance involving a policeman.
Cop 223The first policeman is the Taiwan-born Cop 223 (Ah Wu, played by Kaneshiro) who has broken up with his girlfriend May on April 1st. His birthday is May 1 and he chooses to give their love a month. Every day he buys a tin of pineapples with an expiration date of May 1. By the end of this time, he feels that he will either be rejoined with his love or that it will have expired forever. Meanwhile, a woman in a blonde wig (Lin) tries to survive the drug underworld after a smuggling operation gone sour. Eventually, the Cop, looking for romance, approaches the woman in the blonde wig at a bar. Cop 663The second officer is Cop 663 (Leung), who is similarly dealing with his breakup from a flight attendant (Valerie Chow). He meets a new girl (Faye Wong) at a local lunch counter who falls for him secretly, and who frequently breaks into his apartment during the day to redecorate and "improve" his living situation. AnalysisBoth stories, about disconnection, loneliness and isolation in a vast city, are photographed by Wong's longtime collaborator Christopher Doyle in the style of a music video, making references to Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave (signs, slogans, pop music) and to John Cassavetes (improvised dialogue and situations). Some critics, among them M. A. Abbas, have likened the motif of expiration dates to the arrival of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China (May 1st being, among other things, May Day). A similar theory relating the handover of Hong Kong to Wong Kar-wai's story has been posted at an unofficial Brigitte Lin's website.[1] Origins/Production informationThe film was made during a two month break from the shooting of Wong's wuxia epic, Ashes of Time. Wong had to stop production on that film to wait for equipment to redo the sound. "While I had nothing to do, I decided to make Chungking Express following my instincts."[2] Originally, Wong envisioned the movie to consist of two stories. The filmmaker remembers,
Initially, Wong wanted to make these stories into a film but couldn't find a way to do it until he
He kept on writing and developed a third story. However, after filming the first two stories, he found that the film was getting too long so he relocated the third segment, about a love-sick hitman, to an entirely different movie titled Fallen Angels[2] Wong had specific locations in mind where he wanted to set the action of the film. In an interview, he said "One: Tsim Sha Tsui. I grew up in that area and I have a lot of feelings about it. It's an area where the Chinese literally brush shoulders with westerners, and is uniquely Hong Kong. Inside Chungking Mansion you can run into people of all races and nationalities: Chinese, white people, black people, Indian."[2]This is the setting for much of the first story. Chungking Mansion is very famous with, as Wong observed, "its 200 lodgings, it is a mix of different cultures...it is a legendary place where the relations between the people are very complicated. It has always fascinated and intrigued me. It is also a permanent hotspot for the cops in HK because of the illegal traffic that takes place there. That mass-populated and hyperactive place is a great metaphor for the town herself."[2] The second half of the film was shot in Central, near a popular fast food shop called Midnight Express. "In this area, there are a lot of bars, a lot of foreign executives would hang out there after work," Wong remembers. The fast food shop is forever immortalized as the spot where Tony Leung and Faye Wong's characters met and became attracted to one another. Wong was also drawn to "the escalator from Central to the mid-levels. That interests me because no one has made a movie there. When we were scouting for locations we found the light there entirely appropriate."[2] Critical ReceptionDuring its release in North America, Chungking Express drew generally positive, sometimes ecstatic reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it currently holds a 96% approval rating, with only one negative review out of 25.[3] James Berardinelli awarded the film three-and-one-half stars out of a possible four:[4]"Like John Woo, Tsui Hark, and other directors who learned their craft in Hong Kong, Wong infuses his films with style and energy. His hand-held camera is restless, always moving and shifting. The action sequences are punctuated with unusual shots and stop-motion jumps. By filming Chungking Express in such rich, vibrant manner, the director uses visual images to underscore his themes. Once the viewer gets past bouts of confusion (the film demands more than one viewing), the result is a uniquely memorable look at the ties that bind all people, as presented through two deceptively simple stories."Roger Ebert also gave the film a positive review, but was measured in his praise:[5] "If you are attentive to the style, if you think about what Wong is doing, Chungking Express works. If you're trying to follow the plot, you may feel frustrated...When Godard was hot, in the 1960s and early 1970s, there was an audience for this style, but in those days, there were still film societies and repertory theaters to build and nourish such audiences. Many of today's younger filmgoers, fed only by the narrow selections at video stores, are not as curious or knowledgeable and may simply be puzzled by Chungking Express instead of challenged. It needs to be said, in any event, that a film like this is largely a cerebral experience: You enjoy it because of what you know about film, not because of what it knows about life." MiscellaneousQuentin Tarantino, an admirer of Wong Kar-wai, decided to promote the movie in the United States. A slightly different cut of Chungking Express has been released through Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures label, both theatrically and on video. The latter features lengthy bookended remarks by Tarantino. Faye Wong's Song "Meng Zhong Ren (夢中人)" (literally "people in a dream" or "Dream Person"), a Cantonese cover of The Cranberries' "Dreams" is played twice in the movie. And "California Dreamin'" by The Mamas & the Papas, Faye Wong's character's favorite song, is used as a leitmotif throughout the film to convey the characters' state of mind. Cast and roles
Box OfficeChungking Express earned HK $7,678,549 during its Hong Kong run. On March 8, 1996, the film began a limited theatrical run in North America through Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder distribution company under Miramax. Opening on four screens, it grossed $32,779 ($8,194 per screen) in its opening weekend. Playing at 20 theatres at its widest point, it went on to gross $600,200 total. Awards and nominations
In addition, a poll published by Sight and Sound (the monthly magazine of the British Film Institute) placed Chungking Express at number eight after it asked fifty leading UK film critics to choose the ten best films from the past 25 years. It was described to be arguably one of the best Asian films of contemporary cinema. NotesSee also
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