‘People change. A person may like pineapple today and something else tomorrow...’
I have written many times on these very pages about how horror and comedy are the most subjective genres. And while I stand by that, maybe there is something to be said in this argument for romance too. I know grown men that wept at the conclusion of Lost in Translation, a film that left me feeling absolutely nothing. Not because I’m an empty shell of a man, Garden State gets me every time, but because I didn’t connect with Scarlett Johansson’s Charlotte or Bill Murray’s Bob in any meaningful way. And I didn’t buy their relationship. Chungking Express, a clear influence on both the aforementioned films, lands somewhere in the middle of them in terms of my own emotional reaction…
Directing from his own script, Kar-wai Wong presents us with two stories in Chungking Express. First up, we have lovelorn police officer He Zhiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) falling for a mysterious woman in a preposterous blonde wig (Brigitte Lin), whilst the second half of the story follows a second lovelorn police officer (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung), known only as Cop 663, being romantically pursued by Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Faye (Faye Wong).
So, two seemingly unrelated stories thematically linked by meditations on love, loss and tinned pineapple. Whilst it is drenched in 90s consumerism, Wong’s film doesn’t feel particularly dated, instead evoking timeless classics like It Happened One Night or Casablanca. Crucially, the four main characters are all likeable and well drawn, despite (or perhaps because of) numerous quirky idiosyncrasies typical of this era of filmmaking. The westernised soundtrack is perfect. The script is both warm and beautiful in its simplicity. In short, Chungking Express is a classic of ’90s alternative cinema. I’m not sure if it’s much more than that, but as a child of the ’90s myself… that’s enough.