An exuberant whirlwind of loneliness, longing and love brimming with eccentricity, Wong Kar Wai’s 1994 film, Chungking Express (重慶森林), revolves around Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions and a food stand located in Lan Kwai Fong, Midnight Express, containing two stories, both of which follow lovelorn cops and their pursuit of tenderness. The first of these features Takeshi Kaneshiro as Cop 223/He Qiwu who has recently suffered a break-up on the first of April—the levity of the date inspiring denial and an odd coping routine of collecting canned pineapples that expire on May 1, a symbolic countdown for his love.
The opening scene shows his unexpected encounter with Brigitte Lin’s mysterious character, an event that triggers the rest of Cop 223’s story. Although this scene marks the beginning of only He Qiwu’s part in the film, it manages to highlight integral themes that somewhat bring together the film’s seemingly unconnected individual stories.
part one: urban loneliness in fluorescent hong kong.
Characterized primarily by its remarkable use of the step-printing technique and handheld shots, the film opening employs immersive camerawork and editing to encapsulate the disarray of a metropolis in motion. Christopher Doyle, Wong’s long running cinematographer, tracks the action in visceral detail through a handheld camera, highlighting the motley community of people present in this part of the city, imprinting the film with a sense of voyeurism and translating the smothering density of activity to the screen. The camera momentarily follows Cop 223’s point of view as he chases the criminal, disorienting the viewer as if they were running alongside Qiwu. Additionally, the same effect is achieved when the camera quickly pans from left to right, right to left, imitating Qiwu’s struggle to locate the perpetrator in the crowds of Tsim Sha Tsui. Aiding the sense of disorientation, the use of step-printing develops a pace outlined by urgency, almost as if Wong is prompting the audience to look at these events as something transient, an ephemeral scene that will be gone in the blink of an eye. These quick-cut, frenetic shots of an urban jungle teeming with people guide the cinematographic image towards abstraction in the form of a chase scene where the visuals are such that people and places appear to be a mere blur, reflecting the film’s theme of the coexistence of physical proximity and emotional distance and the longing for connection this leads to in the isolating pace of modern life.
Contrasted with this whirlpool of rapid movement are multiple shots of the sky and a clock, both painted in gloomy blue hues. Though the shots of buildings against the sky is a relatively tranquil or less chaotic image, its effect is disorienting all the same because of the obscure angles and time-lapse which prioritise elevating the film aesthetically, and in terms of narrative, by compromising clarity in order to emphasize the prevailing feeling of confusion and passing time.
The close-up of the clock followed by an extreme close-up of it is a direct departure from the rest of the opening’s blurry segments which echo crammed urban life; hence, the audience cannot help but pay attention to the content of these shots which stresses one of the main themes—time—in the narrative.
A fade-to-black transition marks the end of the opening scene, providing a sense of finality that heightens the dramatic effect of the scene while simultaneously easing the audience into the next, one which further characterises Qiwu as a lovelorn person desperate for affection—a stark contrast to the conventional representation of cops in popular Hong Kong films.
At times, the film’s contemplative mood, very apparent in the opening scene particularly due to the voice-over, almost resembles the strange sense of displacement that accompanies being in an airport, a liminal space where time is more or less a social construct and you can consume diabetic goodness in the form of cupcakes at five a.m. Which is to say that this feeling of constant transience, paired with the poignancy of potential chances and missed connections revealed in the voice-over, imbues the visual terrain of Chungking Express with overwhelming isolation against the backdrop of physical propinquity in Hong Kong’s neon blur: a recurring phenomenon in Wong’s films which Ackbar Abbas refers to as ‘proximity without reciprocity’. Ultimately, with its distinctive editing and camerawork, the film opening introduces its characters in relation to a setting which becomes a palpable reminder of how alone the people in both stories are. Wong’s exploration of longing amid this urban loneliness is one I find endlessly fascinating, particularly in the way it blurs the line between multiple genres and deviates from traditional narrative techniques, prioritising its characters and their emotions above all.
part two: what a difference a day makes.
“Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart,” says the unnamed protagonist of Haruki Murakami’s short story, On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning, preceding a moment in which he imagines romantically pursuing a girl he sees on the street—the introduction of a theme that permeates April Morning and Chungking’s narratives alike. Murakami’s short story has not just influenced the film’s romantic trope of fleeting moments between lonely strangers who are desperate to connect emotionally with someone in a crowded city filled with isolation, but also the narrative voice of Takeshi Kaneshiro’s character, Cop 223.
“Haruki Murakami was very popular in Hong Kong then, and because Kaneshiro Takeshi is half Japanese, I thought it would be funny to have his voice-overs written in Murakami style,” Wong admits.
While the connotations of this referential code may be lost on those who are not aware of Kaneshiro's heritage or unfamiliar with Murakami’s characters, it makes the world of Chungking Express richer for the audience nevertheless by giving Cop 223 such an unmistakable narrative voice. On top of that, the opening further mirrors the atmosphere of evanescence in Murakami's story through the foreshadowing with the voice-over the chance encounter (which would seem insignificant if it were not for Qiwu’s narration) that determines the course of events.
Another captivating detail are the parallels between the voice-over in the opening scene and the transition to Cop 663's story which result in an almost cyclical narrative structure that employs repitition and centralises the common themes in both parts of the film.
According to Wong Kar Wai, “What puts [the two stories of Chungking Express] together is that they are both love stories. I think many city people have a lot of emotions but sometimes they can’t find the people to express them to.” This solidifies the significance of the characters’ emotions and, by extension, the recurring use of voice-overs in the film too. Kaneshiro’s voice-over in the opening serves as a sort of exposition to the first story. As the film progresses, his musings almost have a confessional or rather more personal tone, giving the impression that the audience is his companion rather than somebody within the story; being a narrative that largely depends on its characters’ dwellings and emotional turmoil to pull the audience into the world of the film, it resorts to the proficient use of voice-overs to close the distance between its eccentric characters and the spectator. Also interesting is the fact that although it may initially seem like the audience is being positioned to think of the woman as being a wholly villainous person characteristic of a crime drama, her own voice-over later in film brings us closer to her too. Therefore, the intimacy of the voice-over in the opening humanizes its first protagonist (and eventually other characters too) by magnifying his loneliness until Wong’s dramatis personae and the audience almost feel alone together, holding onto slivers of hope in the form of longing for connection, to the point that even a fleeting encounter with a stranger manifests into a lasting memory like in the case of Cop 223.
"That was the closest we ever got, just 0.01 cm between us. Fifty-seven hours later, I fell in love with this woman." — Cop 223
The content of the voice-over also aids the development of enigma codes as well as representation and ideology in this scene. By rooting the cop’s story in the idea of romance in this way, it contradicts the dominant patriarchal ideology due to which such characters are often represented as hypermasculine men who possess the emotional expression skills of a potato chip or other similar inanimate objects, something that is especially common in typical crime films that often equate masculine physicality to strength and any semblance of emotional vulnerability to weakness rather than a humane aspect of a character’s life. Instead of fighting with gangsters in melodramatic gunshot duels or sophisticated martial arts choreographies, Cop 223, much like Cop 663 in the second half of the film, is about to fall in love. Thus, Kaneshiro’s character is developed here as a deviation from the tough cop archetype; the fact that the centre of his narration is not the culprit on the loose connotes that he is consumed more by his search for affection than a fleeing criminal. As a result, our preconceived expectations from a story that revolves around cops are turned on their heads, and we start to wonder how the events to come will unfold, especially because of the situational irony of a policeman falling in love with a woman who is most probably involved in some sort of suspicious affairs.
Moreover, the scene’s diegetic sounds further contribute to the clamour (and therefore disorientation) of the scene. The racket of the buzzing setting and the sound of thunder in the background of a seemingly calm image of the sky create a polyphony that leaves a lasting impact on the audience.
Accompanying the voice-over and atmospheric sounds is a dramatic musical piece which plays throughout the opening, giving us a sense of the suspense and possible danger at hand when the protagonist crosses paths with the mysterious woman. Used in the opening scene is a track by Michael Galasso which mimics the music of a long gone time period and is fittingly titled Baroque. In art as well as music, the baroque style fills space with action and movement, centralising exaggerated motion, theatricality and emotions, which explains the use of the track during this particular scene. Somewhat reminiscent of the work of famous composers from the baroque era the likes of Bach and Vivaldi, it provides a contrast with the modern pop tunes that dominate the rest of the film but simultaneously represents the setting as a multicultural junction, perhaps subtly outlining the consequences of a colonial past as well. It is also intriguing that the track has multiple melody lines, much like the plot of the film itself, resembling fragmented vignettes woven together.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that music in Chungking Express serves as a profound extension of its settings and characters. In the first half of the film, for example, the same track as the one in the opening is used again almost like a prelude to the blonde-wigged woman’s illicit undertakings. The more obvious display of this use of music in connection to specific characters is, of course, California Dreamin’ which becomes a sort of leitmotif for Faye in the second part of the film.
The rousing impact of the music and voice-over in the film opening coincide with the conventions of the crime/mystery genre by creating tension yet also provide a contrast by introducing romance in the voice-over and underlining the emphasis on urbanity and time, that such a dense, contested place is filled with transformative possibilities; there are multiple lives, each as complex as the next, all happening at the same time, spatially distinguished by measures ‘less than 0.01 cm’. In this way, the chaotic elements of the scene are brought together by immersive atmospheric sounds and music which propels the action forward. Combined together, these auditory elements intensify the drama of this pivotal scene which catalyzes the narrative’s events and simultaneously emphasise the effects created by visuals, so much so that one cannot keep from joining Qiwu in his musings about possibilities and chance encounters that point toward the crucial theme which a song from its soundtrack, Dinah Washington’s What a Diff’rence a Day Makes, thoroughly epitomises.
part three: love and identity amid expiration dates.
The vibrant nature of Chungking Express’s mise en scène gives its setting a multifarious texture, as if the audience were looking at the city through a kaleidoscope. The very beginning of the film, a striking chase scene, sets the tone for the remainder. Immediately, the setting itself also becomes a subject along with the film’s characters. These overpopulated, bustling streets contain many different people—a population of immigrants, foreign travellers, and natives. Accordingly, Chungking Express’s opening scene explores its characters and their identities in close relation to their surroundings.
“[It] is a mix of different cultures… a legendary place where the relations between the people are very complicated. It has always fascinated and intrigued me,” says the director regarding the setting of the first story; at the hinges of this transitory space, a multicultural port city, perch the identities and relationships of its inhabitants, among which are ethnic minorities and the film’s protagonists alike. In other words, the film opening portrays an alternative representation of Hong Kong. Thus, the choice of the spaces portrayed in the opening is of particular importance in Chungking Express. WKW largely ignores the grand skyscrapers and landscapes that dominate western perception of Hong Kong as the ‘pearl of the orient’. Instead, we are offered backdrops like shabby but vibrant shop fronts and fast food places. While it may be spatially tangible, the glamorised version of Hong Kong is rarely encountered by the working class that inhabit the space in Chungking Express; through this authentic representation of the city, the audience is more likely to resonate with the film and experience the charm of the city’s mundanity, which was always at the risk of being too ephemeral in a rapidly changing space.
The mise en scène notably establishes the atmosphere of the film in various ways. The mystery of low-key lighting juxtaposed with moments of dynamic vibrancy once again plays with the audience’s expectations, immersing us in an incredibly complex milieu that serves as a vivid setting for the exploration of its characters’ equally intricate emotions. The lighting also assumes the role of a hermeneutic code characteristic of the mystery and crime genres when Lin’s character steps into a room occupied by red light and disappears behind a curtain.
Although the use of the colour red here could merely be a cursory decision, one cannot help but pay attention to the way the muddy blur of Hong Kong is distinctly punctuated with a sequence focusing on the woman in the blonde wig completely washed in red light. The red connotes danger and the curtain creates imagery of concealment, which indicates secrecy and dishonesty, emphasising her illicit lifestyle, especially since she keeps looking behind her as if she’s running from someone and has her guard up.
Brigitte Lin’s character, donning a raincoat, dark shades and the blonde wig that sets her apart from the expected image of East Asian people (who conventionally have dark hair), is reminiscent of the femme fatale of the film noir. It’s only natural then to expect that the cop would somehow be involved in the mysterious woman’s case, maybe even be seduced by her. However, their two worlds remain separate throughout the narrative and their brief encounter in this scene neither develops into a full-blown romance, nor a tragedy of star-crossed lovers; the woman is represented here as an unreachable, unknowable character (one instance of which is the closing elevator doors that distance the spectator from her), while the cop, melodramatically narrating the moment of bumping into her, seems like a hapless Romeo. The opening, therefore, sets the foundations for a subtle reversal of roles that both parts of the film explore: the representation of the narrative’s women as being mainly assertive and independent and the men as being lovesick and sentimental in their pining.
The woman in the blonde wig (Brigitte Lin): a source of enigma.
Bearing in mind its use of unconventional techniques, Chungking Express is usually classified as a text that conforms to the ideology of postmodernism and seems to prioritise style over substance. However, I think its more nuanced interpretations hold just as much weight as purely stylistic ones; considering that it takes place around the eve of white colonizers’ departure from Hong Kong, the film’s contemplations on identity and isolation and their potential political readings are, in my opinion, hard to ignore. The frantic visuals give time and experiences a slippery quality in the context of the film and mirror the characters’ emotional unrest, a yearning for affection that often remains unfulfilled in the presence of omnipresent metaphorical distance that separates people in this urban setting. This quality of impermanence, inscribed in Qiwu’s displacement and disorientation, reverberates with the colonial history of Hong Kong. In addition to that, the obscurity created by camerawork and editing during the chase also defamiliarize common aspects of everyday life and impart a different energy to what might be familiar in this scene, making the setting embody the estrangement and dislocation that Hong Kong’s own unstable identity during this time was characterised by. The fact that this is one of the very few instances in which the cop’s name is mentioned is also formative in the development of this allegory; people’s perception of these characters goes little beyond nicknames and badge numbers and the woman in the blonde wig is left entirely nameless—such is the impersonality of the landscape they inhabit which is deepened even more when, with the image of Qiwu bumping into a mannequin that resembles Lin’s character, the viewer gets a sense of uncanny similarity in a bustling Hong Kong where so many of the faces that pass on the street are ones our characters will never see again.
The crisis around the city’s identity is not just highlighted by the mise en scène, but also the music; in the opening as well as the rest of the film, the use of western music is indicative of invasive cultural influences. Never are such notions about Hong Kong’s own uncertain identity referred to directly, yet they remain an ubiquitous presence underlined by the film’s various themes even in the opening.
Despite the abstract nature of motion—and, consequently, time—in the opening, Wong makes the viewer conscious of his representation of time through cross-cutting to a clock. The film opening gives the impression that time is passing by and something is being lost with it—literally, the criminal Qiwu is running after and, metaphorically, perhaps the relational possibilities he contemplates over in the voice-over. Evidently, this feeling, visually depicted by incessant motion, is one that is shared by both the audience and the characters; the theme of time is actualized in the form of clocks here and later in the film in various ways too, such as the expiry dates of pineapple cans and mock boarding passes drawn on table napkins. In a way, the characters’ internal restlessness and longing for love is externalized through this temporal imagery.
As the product of exploring a neon-drenched cloud of various themes that looms over Wong Kar Wai’s third feature with the interconnected use of all technical micro-elements, the future—of the characters and setting—becomes something uncertain and unpredictable, creating an utterly-enveloping film opening that leaves the audience wanting more.
The portrayal of lonely people navigating love, loss, longing and identity in neon urbanity is a common occurence in Wong's films, one which he has explored to a hauntingly profound effect.
Images from Chungking Express (1994) , Fallen Angels (1995) and Happy Together (1997).
Wong Kar Wai manages to establish in this film opening a state of perpetual flux accentuated by Christopher Doyle’s visual style. Though it may be primarily a love story told through an intimate study of loneliness and longing interspersed with comedic elements, Chungking Express also draws inspiration from the film noir genre with the urban city setting, policemen and femme fatales, and the bittersweet nature of romance. Thus, the visual iconography here mainly points towards a traditional crime film but the situation the opening ends with, paired with the unconventional representation exhibited in the voice-over, does not; Wong uses popular conventions as stepping stones toward experimentalism which results in a film that embraces genre hybridity. Another way in which it turns conventions on their heads to create an appealing narrative is the uncustomary representation of cops. Beyond its stylistic idiosyncrasy, Chungking Express is a film deeply influenced by and about Hong Kong, its urban space and the mundane interactions within it. The film opening represents aspects of Hong Kong that allow the audience to connect with its characters and setting on a personal level. Its sounds, camerawork, editing and mise en scène combine to create a rhythm like that of some off-beat but memorable song on an obscure album only a funky friend of yours is familiar with—showy in the fun way and not in the dreadful way that goes hand in hand with watching an esoteric arthouse film which involves some moments of marvelling at its technical excellence and maybe several of suppressing your yawns. This opening scene is one brimming with unfulfilled yearning and pervasive isolation; accordingly, it establishes a sense of instability, doing more to prepare the audience for a plot that defies conventional narrative structure instead of one that conforms to perhaps Todorov’s theory which requires a state of equilibrium to begin with.
Overall, a potential delight for pineapple enthusiasts, the film begins with a scene that resembles the psychedelic feeling of experiencing something new for the first time, a strangely hypnotic opening that is surely bound to influence the final product of my foundation portfolio in one way or another.
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