New Year's Countdown...of Excellence: 3 - Chunking Express (1990's selection)

3
Chungking Express
1994, d. Wong Kar-wai - Criterion Channel

The Story (in two paragraphs or less)

He Zhi Wu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is a police detective in Hong Kong, suffering from heartbreak after a recent split with his girlfriend.  He purges her memory after 30 days of collecting expired pineapple tins by eating them, and then vowing to fall in love with the next woman he sees.  The woman in the blonde wig and sunglasses (Brigitte Lin) is secretive, tough-as-nails, and in deep trouble after her Indian drug mules run away on her (and in tracking them down she shoots a few people).  At the end of her limit, she prepares to leave the country.  They meet in a bar with his newfound objective and her standoffish, fatalistic sense of her future.  He really does not want to be alone, and she's too tired to reject the company.  After an uneventful night together, she leaves him a birthday message and then goes out and kills her drug source, shedding her wig and life as she knew it.

Cool and casual Faye (Faye Wong) is just started working at the snack bar (owned by her cousin), and she is immediately intrigued by regular customer, handsome, charming police officer (Tony Leung) who is heartbroken after having just been dumped by his stewardess girlfriend.  When the ex stops by and leaves a letter for him, everyone at the place can't help but steam the letter open and read it, only to find it contains the apartment keys.  She starts spending time at his place when she knows he's not there, cleaning it up, decorating it, watering his plants, stocking up his fishtank.  It would be creepy and sinister it it weren't so damn innocent.  Things progress from there.

What did I think I was in for?
 It's from Wong Kar-wai, a masterful director of limited resume.  I've seen a few of his works (In the Mood for Love, Happy Together, Ashes of Time Redux) all which I remember enjoying well, but, well, don't really remember much about.  If I know anything from my limited exposure to his oeuvre, it's that he's both a visual craftsman and a romantic.  So while I may have wanted that, I wasn't certain that's what I would be getting.  I intentionally avoided reading too much about this when I selected it as my 1990's choice.

What did I get out of it?
Surprise, given that I didn't know there were effectively two separate stories here. The opening at 40 minutes, is fleeting, almost over before it began, like some relationships.  Kar-wai is more experimental in his filming, going for something more hard boiled with his production, heavier shadows and neons.  It's more dangerous and sad than romantic.  There's a technique he uses here, sort of a semi-slow-mo/motion-blur effect which he uses to open the film and introduce our two leads for the initial story, and does it again whenever there's something approximating action. I did not like the effect much at all, but I found the path to the two leads meeting each other intriguing enough, with just enough quirk, that I was disappointed when it crossed over into an otherwise disconnected second story.  

The second story, is a precursor to every turn-of-the-millennium 20-something romance movie which, were it made today, would seem like an upending of the manic pixie dream girl trope.  Faye is certainly pixie-ish in both appearance and attitude, but rather than being the ethereal object of affection for Tony Leung's Officer 663, he's almost completely oblivious to her incursion on his life and mindset. It's utterly charming in a way that I kept expecting to turn dark but never does.  Something about modern storytelling, perhaps the Black Mirror effect, is that anything sweet ultimately has something sinister underneath it... we don't trust that anything can actually be earnest.

I loved Tony Leung's recurring bit where he talks to things in his apartment as if they were alive, even so much as thinking that they have evolved on their own after Faye has swapped them out.  It's so cute.  The recurring use of "California Dreamin'" could have been grating, but it's constantly used with purpose, and clearly informs Faye's character so much.  It takes on additional relevance each time it's played.  I also loved Faye Wong's Cantonese rendition of "Dreams" by the Cranberries (which I didn't realize was by the actress until looking it up)

Do I think it's a classic?
Where certainly In the Mood for Love is a classic, I don't think Chungking Express gets classic status because of its less than satisfying first story.  The second story, though, is wondrous, and certain to be memorable.

Did I like watching this?
I did.  The first part, somewhat, the second part completely. 

Would I watch it again?
I'll likely watch the full thing whenever I get around to doing a Wong Kar-wai marathon...but I'll probably go back to the second story itself many time before then.