90's Watch: Chungking Express (1994)

As Jamie and I discussed after the movie - the 90's were the wild west for cinema in the US.  Indie cinema and the *flavor* of that indie movement were a truly big deal.  It was also a rich era for a semi-mainstreaming of international cinema as the same theaters that carried those indie pics also brought in some European film and Hong Kong cinema.  I'm not saying no theaters do this anymore, but it was much more a part of your standard film scene at the time.

And if you didn't see it in theaters, you might still find the movies for rent - maybe not next to Robot Jox at Blockbuster, but in the go-go 90's Austin film rental scene, I could walk across the street from my dump of an apartment and get whatever I wanted at I Luv Video.  

But, as mentioned before, I just never picked up the films of Wong Kar-Wai.  I was too busy watching Chow Yun-Fat kick ass or whatever.  I was still a dude in my 20's.  Grant me peace.

And the reason I bring all of this up is that Chungking Express is more or less what I guess a quirky romantic comedy with some heart to it is made elsewhere by folks with a lot of skill but their own worldview, aesthetic, story-telling modalities, etc...  Ie: what does a Tarantino-era romantic comedy look like coming out of Hong Kong with a storyteller as famed as Wong Kar-Wai?

You can't not mention the film contains two completely separate stories.  They share no common characters (which led to me making a really dumb comment during the film about the chronology), but they do reflect on one another.  It's two cops, one a plain-clothes cop and hopeless romantic, and the other a beat-cop with a certain rigidity looking to get shaken up.    

It's early in the cycle, but both stories have a bit of the manic-pixie-dream-girl aesthetic, one with more of a pulp-crime angle as our clueless romantic pines for a girl who clearly does not miss him until he eventually meets a criminal on the run.  The other is a story of a cop who can't move on (Tony Leung) because, for him, nothing has changed until he meets the erratic girl behind the counter of his favorite snack shop.  

Apparently this was meant to be a triptych, with three stories told - or possibly four.  The remaining story or two were spun off into 1995's Fallen Angels, which I've yet to see, but like the first film, includes the criminal underground of mid-90's Hong Kong in its stories about shattered relationships.

The first story in Chungking Express includes a human trafficker/ smuggler who somehow manages to lose a gaggle of Indian nationals she's sending abroad loaded down with cocaine.  While the cop ignores his job and hangs out at a snack shop hoping his ex will call, a heavily disguised Brigette Lin tries to find her charges in Hong Kong, growing increasingly desperate.  Her concrete worries are juxtaposed with the worries of the cop who thinks his girl will come back to him if we can keep finding cans of pineapple with an expiration date one month from their break-up.  The absurdity of both's plight leads them to meet in a bar, get drunk and find companionship - if not romance - crashing in a hotel room.  

The second story follows Tony Leung* who believes he's found the one in an air hostess who dumps him for more exciting times and men.  The somewhat insane new girl working at the snack shop receives a letter meant for the cop, including the return of his key from the air hostess.  While the cop is out, she ventures into his apartment, slowly replacing the items in the apartment - an almost haunted place for the cop who thinks the things there held the sadness he felt - until, eventually, he no longer misses the air hostess and is ready for new things.

Like many 90's relationship movies, or break-up movies, it's a mood as much as anything.  There's certainly plot, but the work of the film is to capture a feeling, some more sympathetic than others.  We can recognize the plainclothesman is a bit of a dumdum in matters of the heart and can't recognize a disguise or actual criminal right in front of him, but still root for him to land on his feet.  And we may think Faye is nuts, but still cheer for she and Tony Leung.

In an American film, I'm not sure how any of this would be presented.  In the mid-90's, I can see the goofy, $15 million dollar movie getting released with one of these stories, but made into a slapstick, knocking the edges off that make this film have a sense of realism and therefore relatability.  It's possible an indie movie would have tried for this, but then you can imagine the fun-friend that would be added to give the cop someone to talk to rather than hearing their inner-monologue.  Everyone would be telling the lead males to buck up.

People love this movie, and I get it.  I liked it a lot.  It made me very glad to not be dating, but I liked it.  And I'll be following up with Fallen Angels soon.  

  

*who is so handsome, you want to punch his handsome face