Chungking Express

Every so often a filmmaker finds himself needing to make a movie quickly, with the issue of what movie to make being a secondary concern. Using a hiatus in the filming of a larger epic, Wong Kar-Wai came up with his 1994 Chungking Express, script to finished film, in a matter of only a few weeks. The movie is as loosely structured as something from the French New Wave. Wong Kar-Wai unapologetically changes styles partway through, and he doesn't worry about tidy resolutions or making a serious moral case. What distinguishes Chungking Express is its freshness and honesty. It seems a snapshot of a particular time and place, in this case a certain shopping bazaar in Hong Kong, a few years before the colony reverted to Mainland Chinese control. The scope is no wider than the interior states of a couple of quietly lovesick Hong Kong cops who frequent a take-out food court. The story, such as it is, is divided into uneven halves. Part one begins in the style of a crime thriller, with a mystery blonde in a raincoat and dark glasses (top-billed Brigitte Lin) prepping to smuggle a shipment of drugs. When she runs through the market packing a pistol, the footage is step-printed to create a jerky, artsy effect. In just a few minutes the shaky-vision effect is mostly gone. Just as the mystery blonde catches up with some double-crossers, our attention shifts to a beat-walking Hong Kong policeman, He Qiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro). Qiwu interacts briefly with the mystery blonde, unaware that arresting her would probably make his career. Then he goes back to obsessing over his previous girlfriend, and narrating his melancholy thoughts on the subject. Qiwu rings up old flames, without success. He jogs to excess, telling himself that if he sweats enough, he won't have enough water in his body for tears. The friendly owner-manager of the food stall "Midnight Express" (Piggy Chan Kam Chuen) calls He Qiwu by his police ID number 223. The older man doubles as a casual matchmaker, but Qiwu balks at dating the food stand's new hostess, and she gets away from him too. "You have to act more quickly than that," scolds the take-out manager. To be free of his obsession, 223 buys a can of pineapples, his lost girlfriend's favorite food, every day for a month. If canned pineapples have expiration dates, he reasons, romance must have an expiration date as well. He scours the grocery bins for cans with stamped dates all in the same month. The unhappy 223 shakes himself free of the blues when he runs into the mystery blonde in a bar. She resists his advances but her hardboiled attitude fascinates him. The woman gets stone drunk and Qiwu carries her back to his apartment to sleep it off. The experience functions as therapy for both of them. Chungking Express abruptly shifts to the love life of a second street cop who also can't make lasting contact with the opposite sex. Cop 663 (star Tony Leung) talks to inanimate objects around his apartment. He asks the washcloth why it isn't as absorbent as it used to be, and tells a bar of soap that it's losing weight and should take better care of itself. 663 walks his beat in the market district and becomes another frequent customer of the Midnight Express. There he meets Faye (Faye Wong), the stand's new late night hostess, who entertains herself by playing The Mamas and the Papas' California Dreamin' incessantly. Faye shoots coy looks in 663's direction and waits for a first move that never comes. 663 has a brief affair with an airline hostess but almost immediately loses interest, a development that he translates into his inner poetry: "I thought we'd stay together for the long haul, flying like a jumbo jet on a full tank. But we changed course." Faye learns about the stewardess but has an odd way of getting 663's attention -- she breaks into his apartment to find out what he's like. Faye spends her afternoons rearranging things, playing with stuffed animals (adding one of her own) and in general indulging in an infantile fantasy ... until 663 comes home early one day. Chungking Express's structure is as loose as an untied shoelace, but its romantic through-line is clear and direct. We scan the pair's faces for clues and are rewarded by Faye's child-like reactions and 663's plaintive narration. The unusual story finds its way to an ambiguous but satisfying ending when Faye turns out to be doing some 'California Dreamin' of her own, and suddenly disappears from 663's life. That leads to a love lesson about absence and hearts growing fonder. Chungking Express is a comedy in a "subdued screwball" style, an offbeat, hesitant tale full of heart and humor. Chungking Express is but is one of the first Criterion Collection titles to be offered in simultaneous DVD and Blu-ray versions. The HD transfer simply glows. Christopher Doyle's precise and expressive cinematography is an excellent example of on-the-fly work well suited to a director's vision. Our focus is directed to the character details over visual motifs or pictorial affectations. The movie was an international art house hit, and released in the U.S. under Quentin Tarantino's distribution banner, Rolling Thunder. A hip soundtrack helped make it a date movie for progressive film lovers. Director Wong Kar-Wai has supervised a 5.1 soundtrack mix. Tony Rayns' audio commentary illuminates the director's career as well as that of the movie's four stars. A 1996 TV program interviews Kar-Wai and cameraman Doyle in the film's Hong Kong market location. Doyle's own flat was used for 633's bachelor apartment; the movie was so popular in Japan that tourists blocked Doyle's door, asking to take pictures with him. Miramax's trailer is also included; it sells the film as an action thriller. Criterion disc producer Curtis Tsui enlists critic Amy Taubin for an insert essay, Electric Youth. Taubin relates Chungking Express to the local tension around the impending reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese territory. She also suggests an interesting parallel between Wong Kar-Wai's film and Howard Hawks' screwball classic Bringing Up Baby. For more information about Chungking Express, visit Criterion Collection. To order Chungking Expressr, go to TC M Shopping. by Glenn Erickson

With only eight films to his name since 1988, director Wong Kar Wai carved a niche for himself as an international art house favorite whose dreamy style, fractured narratives and sweeping, pop-flavored romanticism make each of his releases an event. First introduced to American audiences via Miramax's release of his third film, Chungking Express, he proved himself to be far more than the indie flavor of the month with a succession of groundbreaking films including the award-winning In the Mood for Love. After years of substandard video transfers and scattershot distribution, Kino has collected five of his pre-In the Mood films (skipping the unavailable masterpiece Ashes of Time, which is still afflicted with a dreadful presentation on DVD) and allows for a thorough (albeit pricey) appraisal of his early career. His debut feature, As Tears Go By, earns much of its mileage from the dynamic teaming of Hong Kong superstars Maggie Cheung, Andy Lau, and Jacky Cheung in an openly acknowledged riff on Martin Scorses's Mean Streets, complete with soulful music interludes (not surprising given the Stones-inspired title), street violence, and pained romance. Two triad members in Kowloon, capable but violence-prone Wah (Lau) and younger, impetuous Fly (Jacky Cheung), find their lives changed with the arrival of Wah's beautiful, sweet-natured cousin, Ngor (Maggie Cheung); as the two men go about their brutal daily business, Wah finds himself yearning for a better, more stable life. Beautifully shot and fascinating as a blueprint for the director's subsequent, less violent fare, As Tears Go By was generally lost in the deluge of flashy crime films pouring out of Hong Kong in the wake of A Better Tomorrow; indeed, when seen in context with later films the main attraction here is the delicate interplay of color, shadow, and the actors' carefully measured expressions rather than the occasional explosions of brutality. However, all of this feels like a mere dry run compared to his next film and first bona fide classic, 1991's Days of Being Wild. All three stars return along with some significant new cast additions; equally significant is the first participation of regular cinematographer Christopher Doyle, now justifiably regarded as one of the best in the business. Set in 1960, the multi-layered story begins with a fickle lothario, Yuddy (Leslie Cheung), picking up and then rejecting Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung, playing perhaps the same character seen later in In the Mood for Love), who takes the breakup so badly she fails to see the far more worthwhile attentions of a well-intentioned policeman (Andy Lau) in her neighborhood. A mood piece par excellence, the film follows each character's path through a series of bittersweet disappointments and surprises, all accompanied by ravishing visuals and the director's skillful deployment of music to strike the perfect emotional counterpoint. Both of these early titles look adequate but unspectacular on DVD, with anamorphic transfers similar to the ones seen previously on their Region 3 releases in Hong Kong. Blacks are a bit on the pale side, but colors are strong enough. Both prints are at least better than the ones circulating in repertory houses (HK films from this period are notoriously hard to see in decent condition), and the stereo audio sounds fine. (The Region 3 discs included forced and overamped 5.1 mixes, so the two-channel mix here is actually easier to endure.) Both discs include trailers for their respective films as well as Kino's future Wong Kar Wai releases, along with filmographies and still galleries. In keeping with the welcome trend of studios cross-pollinating each other's DVD box sets to aid collectors, the Kino set includes one outside entry, Buena Vista's release of Chungking Express (1994), released earlier as a stand-alone title. A story in two interlocking halves, the film follows a pair of peculiar romances. Heartbroken cop He Qiwu, Officer 233 (House of Flying Daggers' Takeshi Kaneshiro), spends his spare hours ruminating over his ex-girlfriend and buying relevant cans of produce, while bewigged smugger Brigitte Lin is on the run after a double-cross sends her fleeing into the streets. Meanwhile checkout girl Faye (Faye Wang) becomes fascinated with lovelorn Police Officer 663 (Tony Leung) and uses access to his apartment key as a means to explore his inner life and take advantage of his surroundings while he's away. However, their separate lives are bound to collide and indeed do so in a most surprising manner. Though not the full-blown special edition this title deserves, the DVD is more than adequate with a sterling transfer (easily besting its earlier releases in other regions), a catchy 2.0 sound mix, the theatrical trailer, and for better or worse, wraparound segments featuring Quentin Tarantino, whose Rolling Thunder (a subsidiary of Miramax) released the film theatrically in the U.S. At least he's more sincere and subdued here than most of his other Rolling Thunder lectures, which come across like nails on a chalkboard. (See Curdled for one egregious example.) Based on a story planned for but nixed from Chungking Express, the Kino staple Fallen Angels (1995) gets a desperately needed upgrade in their new special edition with a pleasantly clean and steady transfer that easily outdoes their prior, non-anamorphic edition. In the film, laissez-faire hitman Ming (Leon Lai Ming) has his assignments arranged by pretty agent Michele Reis, whom he never communicates with in person. His decision to duck out of the business coincides with the activities of a mute ex-con He Qiwu (same character name, same actor), whose affliction might be connected to the previous film. Serving as sort of a loose sequel, Fallen Angels is obviously a less free-spirited work given its subject matter but still brims with enough heady emotions in classic Wong Kar Wai style, all served up with the usual dollops of dazzling Doyle imagery (with a surprising emphasis on hand-held camerawork here) and judicious use of pop standards. Extras here are identical to the previous two Kino titles. The only genuine special edition of the batch, 1997's Happy Together, is easily the director's most controversial title as it brought together two Hong Kong matinee idols and Wong Kar Wai staples, Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung, as a pair of emotionally tortured gay lovers, complete with an opening sex scene that sent hordes of schoolgirls into shock. An expatriate Hong Kong couple living in Buenos Aireas, Ho Po-wing (Cheung) and Lai Yiu-fai (Leung), finds the break-up process difficult to maintain when the former decides to become a hustler and ends up beaten and bruised, back in his ex-lover's arms. Despite the chipper title, this is probably the director's bleakest film; for some reason the transposition of his thwarted romantic leanings to a gay storyline comes off as catty and downbeat as the lovers squabble, moan, and essentially wallow in misery, unable to sever their ties. It's certainly in keeping with many real life relationships and both actors pull off their roles marvelously (despite Leung's misgivings about the content), but the end result proves to be more exhausting and despairing than insightful. On the other hand, it's commendable that the director never makes the common commercial mistake of stumbling into gay bathos (e.g., Philadelphia) or catty stereotyping (take your pick), making the film a curious almost-success that's commendable more for what it attempts than what it achieves. Fortunately the trademark cinematography and directorial style make this a must for the director's fans, and the DVD delivers with a greatly improved anamorphic transfer and a terrific 1999 one-hour documentary, "Buenos Aires Diaries," featuring tons of on-set footage and coverage of the various locations and participants from the film. All in all, each film here looks as good as (or better than) it ever has on home video before, and even fans who already own Chungking Express by itself will still find the set a worthy upgrade. Of course, the fact that two of the films are new to American home video and essential viewing in and of themselves makes this a shoo-in for anyone with more than a passing interest in one of world cinema's most consistently adventurous and dynamic directorial talents. For more information about The Wong Kar-Wai Collection, visit Kino International. To order The Wong Kar-Wai Collection, go to TCM Shopping. by Nathaniel Thompson