Chungking Express
Encyclopedia
Chungking Express is a 1994
Hong Kong film
written and directed by Wong Kar-wai
. The film consists of two stories told in sequence, each about a lovesick Hong Kong policeman
mulling over his relationship with a woman. The first story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro
as a cop who is obsessed with the break-up of his relationship with a woman named May and his platonic encounter with a mysterious drug smuggler (Brigitte Lin
). The second stars Tony Leung as a police officer who is roused from his gloom over the loss of his flight attendant girlfriend (Valerie Chow
) by the attentions of a quirky snack bar worker (Faye Wong
). The film depicts a paradox in that even though the characters live in densely-packed Hong Kong
, they are mostly lonely and live in their own inner worlds.
The Chinese title translates to "Chungking Jungle", referring to the metaphoric concrete jungle of the city, as well as to Chungking Mansions
in Tsim Sha Tsui
, where much of the first part of the movie is set. The English title refers to Chungking Mansions and the Midnight Express food stall where Faye works.
-born cop He Qiwu, also known as Cop 223 (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro
). Qiwu's girlfriend May broke up with him on April 1 (April Fool's Day). His birthday is May 1 and he chooses to wait for May for a month before moving on. Every day he buys a tin of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1. By the end of this time, he feels that he will either be rejoined with his love or that it will have expired forever. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman in a blonde wig (played by Brigitte Lin
) tries to survive in the drug underworld after a smuggling operation goes sour.
On May 1, Qiwu, looking for romance, approaches the woman in the blonde wig at a bar (the Bottoms Up Club
). However, she is exhausted and falls asleep in a hotel room, leaving him to watch old movies alone all night and order take-out food. He shines her shoes before he leaves her sleeping on the bed. She leaves in the morning and shoots the drug baron (played by Thom Baker) who had set her up. Qiwu goes jogging and receives a message from her on his pager wishing him a happy birthday. He then visits his usual snack food store where he collides with a new staff member, Faye. At this point, a new story begins.
). He meets Faye, the new girl at the snack bar (played by Faye Wong
). She secretly falls for him. The flight attendant waits for the cop around the snack bar, and finds out he is on his day off. She leaves a letter for the snack bar owner to give to the cop. Everyone in the snack bar reads the letter, which is assumed to be the flight attendant's way of telling the cop that their relationship is over. The envelope also has a spare set of keys to the cop's apartment.
Faye uses the keys to frequently break into his apartment by day to redecorate and "improve" his living situation. She finally tells him of the letter but he keeps delaying taking it or even reading it. Gradually, her ploys help him to cheer up, and he eventually realizes that Faye likes him and arranges a date at the restaurant "California" (an actual place in Lan Kwai Fong
at the time). Faye, however, never shows up for the date, and the snack bar's owner, who is her cousin, goes to the restaurant to tell the cop that Faye left for California. Standing the cop up after a last-minute decision to see the world before settling down, she leaves him a fake boarding pass postdated one year later.
In the last scene, Faye, now a flight attendant, returns to Hong Kong. She finds that the cop has bought the snack bar and is converting it into a restaurant. He asks her to stay for the grand opening in a couple days, but she says she does not know if she can. 663 then asks if she can send him a postcard if she leaves, but she says he wouldn't read it anyway. As Faye's about to leave, he gets the boarding pass she gave him a year ago, wrinkled and water-stained, and asks if anyone will accept it. She doubts it and writes him up a new one. Faye asks him where he wants to go with the boarding pass, and 663 says he'll go wherever she goes. Their future remains ambiguous.
film Ashes of Time
. He has said, "While I had nothing to do, I decided to make Chungking Express following my instincts.", and that "After the very heavy stuff, heavily emphasized in Ashes of Time, I wanted to make a very light, contemporary movie, but where the characters had the same problems." Originally, Wong envisioned the two stories as similar but with contrasting settings: "One would be located in Hong Kong [that is, Hong Kong Island
] and the other in Kowloon
; the action of the first would happen in daylight, the other at night. And despite the difference, they are the same stories."
On the screenplay, Wong has said
He kept on writing and developed a third story. However, after filming the first two stories, he found that the film was getting too long so he relocated the third segment, about a love-sick hitman, to an entirely different movie titled Fallen Angels
(1995).
Wong had specific locations in mind where he wanted to set the action of the film. In an interview, he has said:
"One: Tsim Sha Tsui
. I grew up in that area and I have a lot of feelings about it. It's an area where the Chinese literally brush shoulders with westerners, and is uniquely Hong Kong. Inside Chungking Mansion you can run into people of all races and nationalities: Chinese, white people, black people, Indian."
This is the setting for much of the first story. As Wong explains, Chungking Mansion is famous for
The second half of the film was shot in Central
, including Lan Kwai Fong
, near a popular fast food shop called Midnight Express (which was later turned into a 7-11). "In this area, there are a lot of bars, a lot of foreign executives would hang out there after work," Wong remembers. The fast food shop is forever immortalized as the spot where Tony Leung and Faye Wong's characters met and became attracted to one another. Wong was also drawn to "the escalator from Central to the mid-levels. That interests me because no one has made a movie there. When we were scouting for locations we found the light there entirely appropriate." The apartment of Tony Leung's character was cinematographer's Christopher Doyle
's apartment at the time of filming.
"If my memory of her has an expiration date, let it be 10,000 years...". Historically, the number "10,000" was used to represent the concept of "forever" in China and many other Asian countries (see Ten thousand years
).
, can be heard twice during the first part of the movie: during the opening and when Brigitte Lin's character takes the gun in the closer. This track does not appear on the soundtrack album, although three other tracks are similar to it: "Fornication in Space" (track 3), "Heartbreak" (track 8) and "Sweet Farewell" (track 9), played respectively on synth, guitar and piano. The first story also features "Things in Life" by the Jamaica
n reggae
singer Dennis Brown
, which plays in the American bar where the drug baron is located in.
The second story features Faye Wong
's Cantonese cover version of "Dreams
" by The Cranberries
, which is also played over the end credits. "California Dreamin'
" by The Mamas & the Papas
, is played numerous times as it is the favourite song of Faye Wong's character. "What a Diff'rence a Day Made
", performed by Dinah Washington
, is played during a scene between Tony Leung and Valerie Chow's characters.
's Rolling Thunder
distribution company under Miramax. The Region 1 DVD is distributed by Rolling Thunder. Tarantino is an admirer of Wong Kar-wai
, and the DVD features lengthy bookended remarks by him.
Chungking Express was later released by The Criterion Collection
on DVD and Blu-ray Disc
. Chungking Express was re-released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on January 26, 2009.
, which collects film reviews, it currently holds a 96% approval rating, with only one negative review out of 25.
Influential film critic Roger Ebert
gave the film a positive review, but was measured in his praise:
Prolific web reviewer James Berardinelli
awarded the film three-and-one-half stars out of a possible four:
In addition, in a poll published by Sight and Sound (the monthly magazine of the British Film Institute
) asking fifty leading UK film critics to choose the ten best films from the past 25 years, Chungking Express was placed at number eight, and was described as arguably one of the best contemporary Asian films.
1994 in film
1994 was a significant year in film.The top grosser worldwide was The Lion King, which to date stands as the highest-grossing traditionally-animated film of all time...
Hong Kong film
Cinema of Hong Kong
The cinema of Hong Kong is one of the three major threads in the history of Chinese language cinema, alongside the cinema of China, and the cinema of Taiwan...
written and directed by Wong Kar-wai
Wong Kar-wai
Wong Kar-wai BBS is a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylized, emotionally resonant work, including Days of Being Wild , Ashes of Time , Chungking Express , Fallen Angels , Happy Together and 2046...
. The film consists of two stories told in sequence, each about a lovesick Hong Kong policeman
Hong Kong Police Force
The Hong Kong Police Force is the largest disciplined service under the Security Bureau of Hong Kong. It is the world's second, and Asia's first, police agency to operate with a modern policing system. It was formed on 1 May 1844, with a strength of 32 officers...
mulling over his relationship with a woman. The first story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro
Takeshi Kaneshiro
Takeshi Kaneshiro , born October 11, 1973, is a Taiwan-born Japanese actor and singer.-Name:...
as a cop who is obsessed with the break-up of his relationship with a woman named May and his platonic encounter with a mysterious drug smuggler (Brigitte Lin
Brigitte Lin
Brigitte Lin or Brigitte Lin Ching Hsia is a Taiwanese actress. She was a popular actress, regarded as an icon of Chinese cinema, who acted in both Taiwanese and Hong Kong movies...
). The second stars Tony Leung as a police officer who is roused from his gloom over the loss of his flight attendant girlfriend (Valerie Chow
Valerie Chow
Valerie Chow, aka Rachel Shane in the US, is a Hong Kong actress.She has starred in numerous films and several television series, most memorably in Wong Kar-wai's internationally acclaimed 1994 feature, Chungking Express, which earned her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 14th Hong...
) by the attentions of a quirky snack bar worker (Faye Wong
Faye Wong
Faye Wong is a highly successful and influential Chinese singer-songwriter and actress who is usually referred to as a diva . Early in her career she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong . Born in Beijing, she moved to Hong Kong in 1987 and rose to stardom in the early 1990s by singing...
). The film depicts a paradox in that even though the characters live in densely-packed Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, they are mostly lonely and live in their own inner worlds.
The Chinese title translates to "Chungking Jungle", referring to the metaphoric concrete jungle of the city, as well as to Chungking Mansions
Chungking Mansions
Chungking Mansions, is a building located at 36–44 Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong. The building is well known as nearly the cheapest accommodation in Hong Kong. Though the building is supposedly residential, it is made up of many independent low-budget hotels, shops, and other...
in Tsim Sha Tsui
Tsim Sha Tsui
Tsim Sha Tsui , often abbreviated as TST, is an urbanized area in southern Kowloon, Hong Kong. The area is administratively part of the Yau Tsim Mong District. Tsim Sha Tsui East is a piece of land reclaimed from the Hung Hom Bay now east of Tsim Sha Tsui...
, where much of the first part of the movie is set. The English title refers to Chungking Mansions and the Midnight Express food stall where Faye works.
Plot
The movie comprises two different stories, told one after the other, each about a romance involving a policeman. Except for a brief moment when the first story ends and the second begins, the two stories do not interconnect. However, the three main characters from the second story each momentarily appear during the first.First story
The first story concerns TaiwanTaiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
-born cop He Qiwu, also known as Cop 223 (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro
Takeshi Kaneshiro
Takeshi Kaneshiro , born October 11, 1973, is a Taiwan-born Japanese actor and singer.-Name:...
). Qiwu's girlfriend May broke up with him on April 1 (April Fool's Day). His birthday is May 1 and he chooses to wait for May for a month before moving on. Every day he buys a tin of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1. By the end of this time, he feels that he will either be rejoined with his love or that it will have expired forever. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman in a blonde wig (played by Brigitte Lin
Brigitte Lin
Brigitte Lin or Brigitte Lin Ching Hsia is a Taiwanese actress. She was a popular actress, regarded as an icon of Chinese cinema, who acted in both Taiwanese and Hong Kong movies...
) tries to survive in the drug underworld after a smuggling operation goes sour.
On May 1, Qiwu, looking for romance, approaches the woman in the blonde wig at a bar (the Bottoms Up Club
Bottoms Up Club
The Bottoms Up Club is a girlie bar in Wan Chai, Hong Kong. The bar is famous for its appearance in the 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. The interior of the club evokes the interior of the club as seen in the film....
). However, she is exhausted and falls asleep in a hotel room, leaving him to watch old movies alone all night and order take-out food. He shines her shoes before he leaves her sleeping on the bed. She leaves in the morning and shoots the drug baron (played by Thom Baker) who had set her up. Qiwu goes jogging and receives a message from her on his pager wishing him a happy birthday. He then visits his usual snack food store where he collides with a new staff member, Faye. At this point, a new story begins.
Second story
In the second story, the unnamed Cop 663 (played by Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) is similarly dealing with a breakup, this time with a flight attendant (Valerie ChowValerie Chow
Valerie Chow, aka Rachel Shane in the US, is a Hong Kong actress.She has starred in numerous films and several television series, most memorably in Wong Kar-wai's internationally acclaimed 1994 feature, Chungking Express, which earned her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 14th Hong...
). He meets Faye, the new girl at the snack bar (played by Faye Wong
Faye Wong
Faye Wong is a highly successful and influential Chinese singer-songwriter and actress who is usually referred to as a diva . Early in her career she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong . Born in Beijing, she moved to Hong Kong in 1987 and rose to stardom in the early 1990s by singing...
). She secretly falls for him. The flight attendant waits for the cop around the snack bar, and finds out he is on his day off. She leaves a letter for the snack bar owner to give to the cop. Everyone in the snack bar reads the letter, which is assumed to be the flight attendant's way of telling the cop that their relationship is over. The envelope also has a spare set of keys to the cop's apartment.
Faye uses the keys to frequently break into his apartment by day to redecorate and "improve" his living situation. She finally tells him of the letter but he keeps delaying taking it or even reading it. Gradually, her ploys help him to cheer up, and he eventually realizes that Faye likes him and arranges a date at the restaurant "California" (an actual place in Lan Kwai Fong
Lan Kwai Fong
Lan Kwai Fong is a small square of streets in Central, Hong Kong. The area was dedicated to hawkers before the Second World War, but underwent a renaissance in the mid 1980s. It is now a popular expatriate haunt in Hong Kong for drinking, clubbing and dining...
at the time). Faye, however, never shows up for the date, and the snack bar's owner, who is her cousin, goes to the restaurant to tell the cop that Faye left for California. Standing the cop up after a last-minute decision to see the world before settling down, she leaves him a fake boarding pass postdated one year later.
In the last scene, Faye, now a flight attendant, returns to Hong Kong. She finds that the cop has bought the snack bar and is converting it into a restaurant. He asks her to stay for the grand opening in a couple days, but she says she does not know if she can. 663 then asks if she can send him a postcard if she leaves, but she says he wouldn't read it anyway. As Faye's about to leave, he gets the boarding pass she gave him a year ago, wrinkled and water-stained, and asks if anyone will accept it. She doubts it and writes him up a new one. Faye asks him where he wants to go with the boarding pass, and 663 says he'll go wherever she goes. Their future remains ambiguous.
Production
Wong made the film during a two month break from the editing of his wuxiaWuxia
Wuxia is a broad genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists. Although wuxia is traditionally a form of literature, its popularity has caused it to spread to diverse art forms like Chinese opera, manhua , films, television series, and video games...
film Ashes of Time
Ashes of Time
-Critical:When the film opened in Hong Kong it received mixed reviews. Critics found it so elliptical that it was almost impossible to make out any semblance of a plot, something very rare in a wuxia film....
. He has said, "While I had nothing to do, I decided to make Chungking Express following my instincts.", and that "After the very heavy stuff, heavily emphasized in Ashes of Time, I wanted to make a very light, contemporary movie, but where the characters had the same problems." Originally, Wong envisioned the two stories as similar but with contrasting settings: "One would be located in Hong Kong [that is, Hong Kong Island
Hong Kong Island
Hong Kong Island is an island in the southern part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It has a population of 1,289,500 and its population density is 16,390/km², as of 2008...
] and the other in Kowloon
Kowloon
Kowloon is an urban area in Hong Kong comprising the Kowloon Peninsula and New Kowloon. It is bordered by the Lei Yue Mun strait in the east, Mei Foo Sun Chuen and Stonecutter's Island in the west, Tate's Cairn and Lion Rock in the north, and Victoria Harbour in the south. It had a population of...
; the action of the first would happen in daylight, the other at night. And despite the difference, they are the same stories."
On the screenplay, Wong has said
- "When I started to film, I didn't have it written completely. I filmed in chronological order. The first part happened during the night. I wrote the sequel of the story in one day! Thanks to a brief interruption for the New Year festivities, I had some more time to finish the rest of the script."
He kept on writing and developed a third story. However, after filming the first two stories, he found that the film was getting too long so he relocated the third segment, about a love-sick hitman, to an entirely different movie titled Fallen Angels
Fallen Angels (1995 film)
Fallen Angels is a 1995 Hong Kong movie written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Leon Lai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Michelle Reis, Charlie Yeung and Karen Mok.Fallen Angels can be seen as a companion piece to Chungking Express...
(1995).
Wong had specific locations in mind where he wanted to set the action of the film. In an interview, he has said:
"One: Tsim Sha Tsui
Tsim Sha Tsui
Tsim Sha Tsui , often abbreviated as TST, is an urbanized area in southern Kowloon, Hong Kong. The area is administratively part of the Yau Tsim Mong District. Tsim Sha Tsui East is a piece of land reclaimed from the Hung Hom Bay now east of Tsim Sha Tsui...
. I grew up in that area and I have a lot of feelings about it. It's an area where the Chinese literally brush shoulders with westerners, and is uniquely Hong Kong. Inside Chungking Mansion you can run into people of all races and nationalities: Chinese, white people, black people, Indian."
This is the setting for much of the first story. As Wong explains, Chungking Mansion is famous for
- "its 200 lodgings, it is a mix of different cultures...it is a legendary place where the relations between the people are very complicated. It has always fascinated and intrigued me. It is also a permanent hotspot for the cops in HK because of the illegal traffic that takes place there. That mass-populated and hyperactive place is a great metaphor for the town herself."
The second half of the film was shot in Central
Central, Hong Kong
Central is the central business district of Hong Kong. It is located in Central and Western District, on the north shore of Hong Kong Island, across Victoria Harbour from Tsim Sha Tsui, the southernmost point of Kowloon Peninsula...
, including Lan Kwai Fong
Lan Kwai Fong
Lan Kwai Fong is a small square of streets in Central, Hong Kong. The area was dedicated to hawkers before the Second World War, but underwent a renaissance in the mid 1980s. It is now a popular expatriate haunt in Hong Kong for drinking, clubbing and dining...
, near a popular fast food shop called Midnight Express (which was later turned into a 7-11). "In this area, there are a lot of bars, a lot of foreign executives would hang out there after work," Wong remembers. The fast food shop is forever immortalized as the spot where Tony Leung and Faye Wong's characters met and became attracted to one another. Wong was also drawn to "the escalator from Central to the mid-levels. That interests me because no one has made a movie there. When we were scouting for locations we found the light there entirely appropriate." The apartment of Tony Leung's character was cinematographer's Christopher Doyle
Christopher Doyle
Christopher Doyle is a cinematographer. He has won the AFI Award for cinematography, the Cannes Technical Grand Prize, Golden Osella, the Golden Horse awards , and Hong Kong Film Award . Doyle is an affiliate of the Hong Kong Society of Cinematographers.-Biography:Doyle was born in Sydney,...
's apartment at the time of filming.
Marketing
The film is marketed with the taglineTagline
A tagline is a variant of a branding slogan typically used in marketing materials and advertising. The idea behind the concept is to create a memorable phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of a brand or product , or to reinforce the audience's memory of a product...
"If my memory of her has an expiration date, let it be 10,000 years...". Historically, the number "10,000" was used to represent the concept of "forever" in China and many other Asian countries (see Ten thousand years
Ten thousand years
The use of the phrase "ten thousand years" in various East Asian languages originated in ancient China as an expression used to wish long life to the Emperor, and is typically translated as "long live" in English...
).
Soundtrack
The song "Baroque", composed by Michael GalassoMichael Galasso
Michael John Galasso was an American composer, violinist, and music director.-Film Scores:...
, can be heard twice during the first part of the movie: during the opening and when Brigitte Lin's character takes the gun in the closer. This track does not appear on the soundtrack album, although three other tracks are similar to it: "Fornication in Space" (track 3), "Heartbreak" (track 8) and "Sweet Farewell" (track 9), played respectively on synth, guitar and piano. The first story also features "Things in Life" by the Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
n reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
singer Dennis Brown
Dennis Brown
Dennis Emmanuel Brown was a Jamaican reggae singer. During his prolific career, which began in the late 1960s when he was aged eleven, he recorded more than 75 albums and was one of the major stars of lovers rock, a sub-genre of reggae...
, which plays in the American bar where the drug baron is located in.
The second story features Faye Wong
Faye Wong
Faye Wong is a highly successful and influential Chinese singer-songwriter and actress who is usually referred to as a diva . Early in her career she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong . Born in Beijing, she moved to Hong Kong in 1987 and rose to stardom in the early 1990s by singing...
's Cantonese cover version of "Dreams
Dreams (The Cranberries song)
"Dreams" is the first single released by rock band The Cranberries. The song is taken from their 1993 debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?...
" by The Cranberries
The Cranberries
The Cranberries are an Irish rock band formed in Limerick in 1989 under the name The Cranberry Saw Us, later changed by vocalist Dolores O'Riordan. The band currently consists of O'Riordan, guitarist Noel Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawler...
, which is also played over the end credits. "California Dreamin'
California Dreamin'
"California Dreamin is a popular song by The Mamas & the Papas, first released in 1965. The song is #89 in Rolling Stones list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time...
" by The Mamas & the Papas
The Mamas & the Papas
The Mamas & the Papas were a Canadian/American vocal group of the 1960s . The group recorded and performed from 1965 to 1968 with a short reunion in 1971, releasing five albums and 11 Top 40 hit singles...
, is played numerous times as it is the favourite song of Faye Wong's character. "What a Diff'rence a Day Made
What a Diff'rence a Day Made
"What a Diff'rence a Day Made" is a popular song originally written in Spanish by María Méndez Grever , a Mexican composer, in 1934. Originally, the song was known as Cuando Vuelva A Tu Lado...
", performed by Dinah Washington
Dinah Washington
Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones , was an American blues, R&B and jazz singer. She has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s", and called "The Queen of the Blues"...
, is played during a scene between Tony Leung and Valerie Chow's characters.
Distribution
On March 8, 1996, the film began a limited theatrical run in North America through Quentin TarantinoQuentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
's Rolling Thunder
Rolling Thunder Pictures
Rolling Thunder Pictures was a short-lived film distribution company, set up under Miramax Films by Quentin Tarantino, that was headed by Jerry Martinez and Tarantino. It specialized on releasing independent, cult, or foreign films to theaters....
distribution company under Miramax. The Region 1 DVD is distributed by Rolling Thunder. Tarantino is an admirer of Wong Kar-wai
Wong Kar-wai
Wong Kar-wai BBS is a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylized, emotionally resonant work, including Days of Being Wild , Ashes of Time , Chungking Express , Fallen Angels , Happy Together and 2046...
, and the DVD features lengthy bookended remarks by him.
Chungking Express was later released by The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
on DVD and Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
. Chungking Express was re-released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on January 26, 2009.
Box office
Chungking Express earned HK $7,678,549 during its Hong Kong run. In the USA, opening on four screens, it grossed $32,779 ($8,194 per screen) in its opening weekend. Playing at 20 theatres at its widest point, it went on to gross $600,200 total.Critical reviews
During its release in North America, Chungking Express drew generally positive, sometimes ecstatic reviews from critics. On the website Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, which collects film reviews, it currently holds a 96% approval rating, with only one negative review out of 25.
Influential film critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
gave the film a positive review, but was measured in his praise:
"If you are attentive to the style, if you think about what Wong is doing, Chungking Express works. If you're trying to follow the plot, you may feel frustrated...When Godard was hot, in the 1960s and early 1970s, there was an audience for this style, but in those days, there were still film societies and repertory theaters to build and nourish such audiences. Many of today's younger filmgoers, fed only by the narrow selections at video stores, are not as curious or knowledgeable and may simply be puzzled by Chungking Express instead of challenged. It needs to be said, in any event, that a film like this is largely a cerebral experience: You enjoy it because of what you know about film, not because of what it knows about life."
Prolific web reviewer James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli is an American online film critic.-Personal life:Berardinelli was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey and spent his early childhood in Morristown, New Jersey. At the age of nine years, he relocated to the township of Cherry Hill, New Jersey...
awarded the film three-and-one-half stars out of a possible four:
"Like John WooJohn WooJohn Woo Yu-Sen SBS is a Hong Kong-based film director and producer. Recognized for his stylised films of highly choreographed action sequences, Mexican standoffs, and use of slow-motion, Woo has directed several notable Hong Kong action films, among them, A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Hard...
, Tsui HarkTsui HarkTsui Hark , born Tsui Man-kong, is a Hong Kong New Wave film director and producer. He is viewed as a major figure in the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema .-Early life:...
, and other directors who learned their craft in Hong Kong, Wong infuses his films with style and energy. His hand-held camera is restless, always moving and shifting. The action sequences are punctuated with unusual shots and stop-motion jumps. By filming Chungking Express in such rich, vibrant manner, the director uses visual images to underscore his themes. Once the viewer gets past bouts of confusion (the film demands more than one viewing), the result is a uniquely memorable look at the ties that bind all people, as presented through two deceptively simple stories."
In addition, in a poll published by Sight and Sound (the monthly magazine of the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
) asking fifty leading UK film critics to choose the ten best films from the past 25 years, Chungking Express was placed at number eight, and was described as arguably one of the best contemporary Asian films.
Awards and nominations
- 1994 Golden Horse Awards
- Winner - Best Actor (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai)
- 1995 Hong Kong Film AwardsHong Kong Film AwardsThe Hong Kong Film Awards , founded in 1982, are the most prestigious film awards in Hong Kong and among the most respected in mainland China and Taiwan. Award ceremonies are held annually, typically in April. The Awards recognize achievement in all aspects of filmmaking, such as directing,...
- Winner - Best Picture
- Winner - Best Director (Wong Kar-wai)
- Winner - Best Actor (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai)
- Winner - Best Editing (William Cheung Suk-Ping, Kwong Chi-Leung, Hai Kit-Wai)
- Nomination - Best Actress (Faye Wong)
- Nomination - Best Supporting Actress (Valerie Chow Kar-Ling)
- Nomination - Best Screenplay (Wong Kar-wai)
- Nomination - Best Cinematography (Christopher Doyle, Andrew Lau Wai-Keung)
- Nomination - Best Art Direction (William Cheung Suk-Ping)
- Nomination - Best Original Film Score (Frankie Chan Fan-Kei, Roel A. Garcia)
Cast
- Brigitte LinBrigitte LinBrigitte Lin or Brigitte Lin Ching Hsia is a Taiwanese actress. She was a popular actress, regarded as an icon of Chinese cinema, who acted in both Taiwanese and Hong Kong movies...
- Woman in blonde wig - Tony Leung Chiu-Wai - Cop 663
- Faye WongFaye WongFaye Wong is a highly successful and influential Chinese singer-songwriter and actress who is usually referred to as a diva . Early in her career she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong . Born in Beijing, she moved to Hong Kong in 1987 and rose to stardom in the early 1990s by singing...
- Faye - Takeshi KaneshiroTakeshi KaneshiroTakeshi Kaneshiro , born October 11, 1973, is a Taiwan-born Japanese actor and singer.-Name:...
- He Qiwu, nicknamed Ah Wu, Cop 223 - Valerie ChowValerie ChowValerie Chow, aka Rachel Shane in the US, is a Hong Kong actress.She has starred in numerous films and several television series, most memorably in Wong Kar-wai's internationally acclaimed 1994 feature, Chungking Express, which earned her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 14th Hong...
- Flight attendant who breaks up with Cop 663 - Thom Baker - Double-crossing drug dealer
- Chan Kam-Chuen - Manager of the takeway restaurant 'Midnight Express'
- Kwan Lee-na - Richard
- Wong Chi-Ming - Man
- Leung Sun - The 2nd May, who works at the 'Midnight Express'
- Choh Chung-Sing - Man
External links
- Chungking Express at Rotten TomatoesRotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
- Quotes from Chungking Express (at the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
) - Chungking Express: Electric Youth — essay by critic Amy TaubinAmy TaubinAmy Taubin is an American film critic. She is a contributing editor for two prominent film magazines, the British Sight & Sound and the American Film Comment...
at The Criterion CollectionThe Criterion CollectionThe Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions... - "Chungking Express: Walking with a Map of Desire in the Mirage of the Global City", Tsung-Yi Huang
- Pictures of some filming locations