Chungking Express

Chungking Express
Theatrical release poster
Traditional 重慶森林
Simplified 重庆森林
Mandarin Chóngqìng sēnlín
Cantonese Cung4 Hing3 Sam1 Lam4
Literally Chungking Forest
Directed by Wong Kar-wai
Produced by Chan Yi-kan
Written by Wong Kar-wai
Starring
Music by Frankie Chan
Roel. A Garcia
Cinematography Christopher Doyle
Lau Wai-Keung (Andrew Lau)
Edited by William Chang
Kai Kit-wai
Kwong Chi-Leung
Production
company
Jet Tone Production
Distributed by Ocean Shores Video (HK) Miramax Films
Rolling Thunder Pictures (US)
Release date
  • 14 July 1994 (1994-07-14) (Hong Kong)[1]
Running time
 98 minutes
Country Hong Kong
Language Cantonese
Mandarin
English
Japanese
Hindi
Box office $600,200 (US)[2]
HK$7,678,549 (HK)[1]

Chungking Express is a 1994 Hong Kong drama film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai.[3] The film consists of two stories told in sequence, each about a lovesick Hong Kong policeman mulling over his relationship with a woman. The first story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro as a cop obsessed with his breakup with a woman named May, and his encounter with a mysterious drug smuggler (Brigitte Lin). The second stars Tony Leung as a police officer roused from his gloom over the loss of his flight attendant girlfriend (Valerie Chow) by the attentions of a quirky snack bar worker (Faye Wong).

"Chungking" in the title refers to Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui, where Wong grew up in the 1960s. "Express" refers to the food stand Midnight Express, located in Lan Kwai Fong, an area in Central, Hong Kong.

Plot

First story

Taiwan-born cop He Qiwu is dumped by his girlfriend May on April 1. He chooses to wait until the month of May before moving on. Every day he buys a tin of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1, because May enjoyed pineapples. Meanwhile, a woman in a blonde wig tries to survive in the drug underworld after a smuggling operation goes sour.

On 1 May, Qiwu approaches the woman in the blonde wig at the Bottoms Up Club. However, she is exhausted and falls asleep in a hotel room, leaving him to watch old movies and order food. He shines her shoes before he leaves her sleeping on the bed. She leaves in the morning and shoots the drug baron who set her up. Qiwu goes jogging and receives a message from her on his pager wishing him a happy birthday. He visits his usual snack food store where he collides with a new staff member, Faye.

Second story

Another police officer is also dealing with a breakup, with a flight attendant. Faye secretly falls for him. One day, the flight attendant visits the store and waits for the man. She learns he is on his day off and leaves him a letter containing a set of keys to his apartment for the snack bar owner to give him.

Faye uses the keys to repeatedly enter the man's apartment to clean and redecorate. She finally tells him of the letter, but he delays reading it. Gradually, her ploys help him cheer up. He realizes that Faye likes him and arranges a date at a restaurant, California. Faye does not arrive, and the snack bar owner, her cousin, goes to the restaurant to tell him that Faye has left for California, America, after a last-minute decision to see the world. She leaves him a boarding pass drawn on a paper napkin dated one year later.

Faye, now a flight attendant, returns to Hong Kong. She finds that the man has bought the snack bar and is converting it into a restaurant. He asks her to stay for the grand opening, and asks her to send him a postcard if she leaves. As Faye is about to leave, he presents the boarding pass, wrinkled and water-stained, and she writes him a new one.

Cast

  • Brigitte Lin – Woman in blonde wig
  • Tony Leung Chiu-Wai – Cop 663
  • Faye Wong – Faye
  • Takeshi Kaneshiro – He Qiwu, nicknamed Ah Wu, Cop 223
  • Valerie Chow – Flight attendant who breaks up with Cop 663
  • Thom Baker – Double-crossing drug dealer
  • Chan Kam-Chuen – Manager of the takeaway restaurant 'Midnight Express'
  • Kwan Lee-na – Richard
  • Wong Chi-Ming – Man
  • Leung Sun – The 2nd May, who works at the 'Midnight Express'
  • Choh Chung-Sing – Man

Production

Shops inside Chungking Mansions
Central–Mid-levels escalators

Wong Kar-wai made Chungking Express during a two-month break from the editing of his wuxia film Ashes of Time. He said "While I had nothing to do, I decided to make Chungking Express following my instincts,"[4] and that "After the very heavy stuff, heavily emphasized in Ashes of Time, I wanted to make a very light, contemporary movie, but where the characters had the same problems." Originally, Wong envisioned the stories as similar but with contrasting settings: one in Hong Kong Island in daylight, and the other in Kowloon at night. He felt that "despite the difference, they are the same stories."[4]

The screenplay was not finished by the time filming began; Wong finished it when filming paused over New Year. He wrote the second story in a single day.[4] He developed a third story, about a love-sick hitman, but as he felt it would make Chunking Express overlong, he produced it as a separate film, Fallen Angels (1995).

Wong wanted to film in Tsim Sha Tsui, as he grew up in the area and felt a strong connection to it. He described it as "an area where the Chinese literally brush shoulders with westerners, and is uniquely Hong Kong." He was drawn to Chungking Mansion for its many lodgings and mix of cultures and its significance as a crime hotspot; he felt that, as a"mass-populated and hyperactive place", it worked as a metaphor for Hong Kong itself.[4]

The second story was shot in Central, including Lan Kwai Fong, near a popular fast food shop called Midnight Express.[5] "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."[4] The apartment of Tony Leung's character was cinematographer Christopher Doyle's apartment at the time of filming.[6]

Marketing

The film's marketing posters were designed by artist Stanley Wong, under his pseudonym "Another Mountain Man".[7]

Soundtrack

The main recurring music for the first story is Dennis Brown's "Things in Life". The song "Baroque", composed by Michael Galasso, can be heard twice during the first part of the movie: during the opening and when Brigitte Lin's character takes the gun in the closer. This track does not appear on the soundtrack album, although three other tracks are similar to it: "Fornication in Space" (track 3), "Heartbreak" (track 8) and "Sweet Farewell" (track 9), played respectively on synth, guitar and piano.

The song "California Dreamin'" by The Mamas & the Papas plays in the key scenes in the second story, which also features Faye Wong's Cantonese cover version of "Dreams" by The Cranberries, which is also played over the end credits. (Titled "Mung Zung Yan", it's also included in her 1994 album Random Thoughts. Her next album, Sky, includes a Mandarin cover.) "California Dreamin'" is played numerous times as it is the favourite song of Faye Wong's character and fits the theme of the second story. "What a Diff'rence a Day Made", performed by Dinah Washington, is played during a scene between Tony Leung and Valerie Chow's characters, as well as an encounter between Tony Leung and Faye Wong's characters later in the film.

Distribution

On 8 March 1996, the film began a limited theatrical run in North America through Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder distribution company under Miramax. The Region 1 DVD is distributed by Rolling Thunder. Tarantino is an admirer of Wong Kar-wai, and the DVD features lengthy bookended remarks by him.

Chungking Express was later released by The Criterion Collection on DVD and Blu-ray Disc, although both versions are now out of print. Chungking Express was re-released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on 26 January 2009.

Reception

Box office

Chungking Express earned HK $7,678,549 during its Hong Kong run.[1] In the USA, 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.

Critical response

During its release in North America, Chungking Express drew generally positive, sometimes ecstatic reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90%, based on 51 reviews, and an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Even if all it had to offer were writer-director Wong Kar-wai's thrillingly distinctive visuals, Chungking Express would be well worth watching; happily, its thoughtfully drawn characters and naturalistic performances also pack a potent dramatic wallop."[8]

Influential film critic Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review, but was measured in his praise:[9]

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.

Prolific web reviewer James Berardinelli awarded the film three and a half stars out of four:[10]

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.

In a 2002 poll published by Sight and Sound (the monthly magazine of the British Film Institute) asking fifty leading UK film critics to choose the ten best films from the previous 25 years, Chungking Express was placed at number eight.[11] In the magazine's 2012 poll to find the most acclaimed films of all time, Chungking Express ranked 144.[12]

Awards and nominations

  • 1994 Golden Horse Awards
    • Winner – Best Actor (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai)
  • 1995 Hong Kong Film Awards
    • Winner – Best Picture
    • Winner – Best Director (Wong Kar-wai)
    • Winner – Best Actor (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai)
    • Winner – Best Editing (William Cheung Suk-Ping, Kwong Chi-Leung, Hai Kit-Wai)
    • Nomination – Best Actress (Faye Wong)
    • Nomination – Best Supporting Actress (Valerie Chow Kar-Ling)
    • Nomination – Best Screenplay (Wong Kar-wai)
    • Nomination – Best Cinematography (Christopher Doyle, Andrew Lau Wai-Keung)
    • Nomination – Best Art Direction (William Cheung Suk-Ping)
    • Nomination – Best Original Film Score (Frankie Chan Fan-Kei, Roel A. Garcia)

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Hong Kong film archive database: ''Chungking Express''". Ipac.hkfa.lcsd.gov.hk. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  2. ↑ "''Chunking Express'' at Box Office Mojo". Boxofficemojo.com. 16 April 1996. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  3. ↑ Blaise, Judd. "Chungking Express (1994)". Allmovie. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved 11 January 2013.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 J.D. Lafrance, 'Cinematic Pleasures: Chungking Express', Erasing Clouds 23 (2004)
  5. ↑ ""Wong Kar Wai's Midnight Express… now a 7–11?", hongkonghustle.com, August 4, 2008". Hongkonghustle.com. 4 August 2008. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  6. ↑ "Painting With the Camera" – Christopher Doyle on cinematography Archived 27 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine.. Berlinale Talent Campus, 13 February 2005
  7. ↑ "頭條日報 頭條網 - 黃炳培 一半一半 還是百分之五". Headline Daily. Retrieved 2015-10-11.
  8. ↑ "Chungking Express (1996)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved April 10, 2018.
  9. ↑ "review by Roger Ebert". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. 15 March 1996. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  10. ↑ "review by James Berardinelli". Reelviews.net. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  11. ↑ "Modern Times". Sight and Sound. British Film Institute. 25 January 2012. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  12. ↑ "The Greatest Films Poll – Chungking Express". Sight and Sound. British Film Institute. Retrieved 12 March 2014.
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