| CHUNGKING
EXPRESS Chongqing senlin |
 1994
- Hong Kong
Director: Wong Kar-Wai - Reviewed by Linda  To
risk sounding like a squealing schoolgirl, I have to say that there is just
about no one cuter than Tony Leung's lovelorn police officer in Chungking
Express. Not only does he look good in a uniform, and is heartbroken by his
girlfriend dumping him, but he has stuffed animals all over his apartment and
has contemplative discussions with his bar of soap (telling it that things can't
be so bad that it has to lose so much weight).The only thing wrong with Chungking Express is that it is really two movies instead of one. There are literally two halves to this film, and for all practical purposes, they have nothing to do with each other. The first half of the film is about a young Hong Kong cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who has been dumped by his girlfriend. He is distraught, thinking she played an April Fool's joke on him, so he gives her a month to take him back. In the meantime, there is a parallel story of a mysterious woman (Brigitte Lin) who runs some sort of drug-running business involving illegal immigrants. Her scenes are paranoid and often violent and frantic, while the Kaneshiro's scenes are usually funny and introspective. Eventually the two stories overlap, not very successfully in my opinion, as the cop and the woman cross paths one long night. But don't give up on Chungking Express! The real treat of this movie is the second half... The film completely switches gears to entirely new characters in the second half, as the focus becomes a take-out fast food shop (the Chungking Express of the title). Another lovelorn cop (Tony Leung) is a frequent customer, scarred by an airline stewardess who dumped him. Of course he doesn't notice the crush of the girl who works there (Faye Wong), an eccentric free-spirit who listens to American pop music blasted so loud that she can't hear the customers' orders. She starts to stage run-ins on the street with the cop, and secretly influences his life in unusual and hilarious ways. The romance is slow and sweet, and enhanced by the dream-like blurry cinematography of Wong Kar-Wai regular cameraman Christopher Doyle. The pop songs (which included a dead-on Chinese version of the Cranberries' "Dreams" sung by Faye Wong herself), add a buoyancy and charm to the story. It is the second half of Chungking Express, the perfectly-filmed romance, that you never want to end. This part of the film would easily get the highest recommendation from me: the full pie rating... but unfortunately the weak first half brings down the rating for the whole film. Don't let it deter you from renting this movie though. You'll never see a more delightful romance captured on screen than the cop-meets-waitress story in Chungking Express! |
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