ChungKing Express

I love movies and music as many of you can tell by now. I watch almost all kinds of movies and i listen to all kind of music. Language or preconcieved notions have never kept me away from my periodic food for soul indulgence. I watch action, comedies, thrillers and horrors (which is the least preferred genre and is always watched with a magazine in front - to hide behind.)

But what i love the most are movies that speak the language of romance, i am a sucker for romantic movies. Having said that there are very few movies that are truly romantic. I am not talking about the mushy - soppy romantic sagas with tonnes of glycerine thrown-in, or the girl and boy love each other and sprint through a hurdle race to happily ever after, or the teen-angst movies with jealous boyfriends and girlfirends. I am talking about romance that leaves you breathless and lighthearted, that leaves you with an indescribable feeling, with butterflies in your stomach and sometimes a dull ache in your heart. I am talking of something that is both innocent and seductive and you can't stop smiling long after the movie has finished. There are very few movies like that.

Chungking Express is one of them. I felt this light-hearted and in-love in a non-soppy way when i watched Amelie. Now these two films are different, very different but very similar in the way they leave you feeling long after the show is over.

ChungKing Express is the story of four very different characters and their parallel running love stories. The first story is that of Cop 223, He Qiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro - eye candy for women). He is a plainclothes policeman who pines for an ex-girlfriend, May - who left him after 5yrs of being together. They broke off on 1st April, so he decides to let the joke run for a month untill 1st May when he turns 25. Untill then he buys a can of pineapple with a 1st May expiry date. Everyday. May likes pineapples. On 1st May, 223 comes to terms with the fact that May is not coming back and finishes off the pineapples. All 30 cans of them. He then decides to fall in love with the first woman he sets his eyes on. His ice-breaker line is "do you like pineapples?" asked in four different languages. Now this woman turns out to be one mysterious woman (played by Brigitte Lin). So mysterious that we are never told her name and never get to see her eyes. She is always in a raincoat, sunglasses and a blonde wig. She is one tough cookie who rules over the seedy corridors of ChungKing Mansions, full of south asian men and is into smuggling of drugs and the likes. She carries a gun and shoots at the drop of hat. Needless to say, this match does not work, it's not even a match. But this mysterious woman leaves 223 with a memory that will last him a lifetime. He ends up reflecting, if memories had an expiry date he would wish for them to last for centuries.

The second story is that of uniformed Cop 663 (Tony Leung - an awesome actor!). He, like 223 is yet to get over an ex. An airhostess, who leaves him with a letter that says change of flight and a boarding pass with cancelled stamped on it. Along with his house keys. When he is home alone, he speaks to the soft toys, the tattered rag, the bar of soap, her air-hostess uniform. He talks to them. He is still trying to get over her. And while he is getting over her, Faye (Faye Wong - an amazing debut) falls for him - silently. Faye works at the snack bar Midnight Express (which is the common factor linking the characters 223 and 663, both frequent this place). She is a dreamer, who dreams of going to California and listens to 'California Dreaming'. Loud. Because it helps her not think. But 663 doesn't notice any of this. He doesn't notice anything when she quietly enters his life and his home. She cleans his house, changes his bar of soap, buys new shirts, new slippers for him, gets him new rags, goldfish, looks for long strands of hair on his bed...she does all this everyday without his knowledge. He can feel that his life is changing but he doesn't know why and how. There is something incredibly romantic and lovely about this bit and i totally fell in love with how Faye takes over his life without his knowledge! You see she does all this for she is in love with him, in her own way. Acknowledgement doesn't matter to her.

Like all WongKarWai movies, this one has a very definite character and mood. The camera and the movie moves at a feverish pace. It's restless and impatient, much like HongKong. It takes you on a race at an exciting pace and you are left intoxicated. The visuals are stunning as well. The dingy, cramped up holes of ChungKing Mansions, the lanes bylanes of Central and Lan Kwai Fong couldn't have been captured better. You get to see HongKong from some very interesting angles and always with an inherent dynamism.

Despite being a romantic movie with only four main characters and two parallel running love stories, this is not a simple movie. The genius of WongKarWai lies in how he narrates the story. At first it seems simple. When you watch it the second time, you start noticing things. It's the subtlety that steals the show. I like the way he subtely introduces the characters of the second story while the first is still running. We see a glimpse of each of the characters from the second story, the airhostess, Faye, 663 while we are still with He Qiwu and his heartache. Or for that matter the themes of Canned food, Expiry dates and Boarding Passes that run throughout the movie. It's far more intricate and deceptive than it seems and therein lies the beauty of this movie. It's like one of those mosaic floors of old mansions where you would find something new everytime you had a look...something subtle and hidden, but something that makes the mosaic so much more interesting, everytime you discover it.

As i sip my wine and write this while listening to Faye Wong's take on Dreams, i still have that feeling in my stomach and i want to move the way Faye does on 'California Dreaming'. And i realise whatever i have written here can never do justice to the beauty of this movie.