Chunking Express

A movie about being in love, drifting in & out of love, obsessing over love & one man's obsessive love of chef salad. I fell in love with this movie immediately, & have been enchanted by it (& Wong Kar-Wai's other films) ever since. The film is broken up into two very loosely connected parts making up the whole (for the purposes of this blog, I will only discuss the second section).

Central to my favorite story in the film are two characters, played by Tony Leung & Faye Wong (in her film debut) respectively. Leung plays a cop who is always stopping by a food stand for chef salad. He meets Wong on what is presumably her first day working at the stand, & their lives become immediately intertwined (more than Leung realizes).

Crazy bitch starts obsessing over him, going as far as breaking into his house to clean it, doing a bit of creative reorganization in the process. Somehow instead of coming across as creepy, a level of sweetness almost peaks through.

Is is because...
(a): maybe I'm way too lazy to clean up after myself?
(b): have secretly wanted to meet a girl who would break into my house & tidy up after me?
-or-
(c): maybe it's because I am just secretly drawn to adorable psychos)?

Also, besides subtlety complex characters, Chungking Express holds the distinction of being a film that was lensed by master cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who worked with director Wong Kar-Wai on almost every one of his films until a very public falling out a couple of years ago (see Fallen Angels & Happy Together for two more examples of this power-duo at their best). The film looks beautiful in every inch of the frame, just dripping with magic.

Trailer:


Another star of the film is Kar-Wai's clever use of repetition in music. One song in particular gets into your psyche, which is " California Dreamin' " by The Mamas & The Papas. It underscores Wong's character, becoming her theme song. In Leung & Wong's first meeting, she tells him that she loves the music loud so she won't have to think, though she seems to be very much in her own head space throughout most of the film. I cannot possibly do the film/music love affair as much justice as the good folks at the AV Club did, so here is a link to a great article about Chungking Express & It's Use Of Music. Definitely worth checking out.

Mamas, Papas & Chugking Express:


All in all, this is one of the movies that continues to make impressions after repeated viewings, & I make sure to sit through it at least once a year for the last 13 or 14 years. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Quentin Tarantino Discusses Chungking Express: