Tocka

Chunking Express by Wong Kar Wai
screening

 

PLOT SINOPSIS

A Hong Kong fast food restaurant acts as the link between two unusual stories of police officers in love in this eccentric, stylish comedy-drama. Director Wong Kar-Wai plays freely with traditional narrative structure, dividing his film into two loosely connected segments. The first centers on a depressed cop struggling to come to terms with a recent break-up. His sad isolation is transformed when he encounters a beautiful, mysterious femme fatale, whose involvement with the criminal underworld proves troublesome for both. The second story explores the odd relationship between a female restaurant worker and another recently jilted police officer. The strange woman decides to regularly clean and redecorate the man's apartment in his absence, allowing the two to form a close intimacy without meeting face to face. Both stories present a beautifully atmospheric look at modern urban life and romance, with its combination of isolation and casual, unexpected meetings. Chungking Express came to the attention of American audiences thanks to the efforts of director Quentin Tarantino, whose own brand of fractured storytelling and urban cool owes a debt to Wong Kar-Wai.
 

REVIEW

At a time when Hong Kong cinema was known more for its pyrotechnics and jaw-dropping feats of physical daring than for sensitive explorations of the human condition, Chungking Express was a revelation to both domestic and international audiences. The film swept the 1995 Hong Kong Film Academy awards and established director Wong Kar-wai as one of world cinema's most adventurous and influential filmmakers. Ironically, Chungking Express was made on a whim when Wong had a three-month break from his famously troubled production of Ashes of Time (1994). In contrast to the somber, weighty tone of that film, Wong wanted to make a film that was light, funny, and even whimsical. Writing the script during the day while shooting at night, he allowed himself to abandon the rigid confines of conventional narrative for a looser, more thematic structure. Consisting of two similar but unrelated stories, the film details the lonely lives of four of Hong Kong's most isolated, disconnected inhabitants as they cross paths. The characters' sole commonality is Hong Kong's urban landscape, which swoons with neon-lit melancholy thanks to Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle's eye-popping camerawork. The result is a film infused with the melancholy of random, fleeting urban encounters as it also crackles with a rare vitality, reflecting both the conflicting emotions of city life in general and the bustle and uncertainty of Hong Kong in the anxious years leading up to its 1997 handover to China.
 

CAST
Brigitte Lin	Woman in blonde wig
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai	Cop 663
Faye Wong	Faye
Takeshi Kaneshiro	He Quiwu, Cop 223
Valerie Chow	Air Hostess

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Wong Kar-Wai	Director / Screenwriter
Chan Pui-Wah	Producer
Chan Yi-Kan	Producer
Christopher Doyle	Cinematographer
Andrew Lau	Cinematographer

 

Wong Kar Wai

BIOGRAPHY

FILMOGRAPHY