1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 51: Chungking express
It’s possible that when they were updating Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940), the makers of You’ve Got Mail (1998) also had in mind Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express.
The Cranberries’ song “Dreams” is in both of these 1990s movies. In Chungking Express, it’s sung in Cantonese by the lead actress, the pop star Faye Wong.
Does Chungking Express owe something to The Shop Around the Corner?
All three of these romantic comedies are about lonely city-dwellers who send each other letters (or emails, or telephone messages). Of these movies, Chungking Express pays the most attention to how long-distance communication can be a device for keeping potential or former lovers at arm’s length. The main characters’ daydreaming is so extreme that, for them, actual contact with another person is almost beside the point.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Chungking Express tells two tales, one after the other. They are roughly equal in length, but not, I think, in import. The first tale is a very long “induction” that prepares viewers for the second tale – think of the story-before-the-story in The Taming of the Shrew – though it is not the second tale’s “frame story.” (Forgive me if I am not getting the jargon right.)
In the first tale, a young police officer dreams of getting back together with his ex-girlfriend.
He performs various (quasi-fantastical) self-harm rituals:
He fixes his heart upon a woman who always wears sunglasses and a yellow wig.
This woman has life-or-death problems which are altogether disconnected from the young man’s fantasies. Unlike the rest of the movie, which is episodic, this woman’s story is narrated with the careful, brisk logic of a heist flick.
In the second tale, another young police officer (Tony Leung) dreams of getting back together with his ex-girlfriend.
She sends him a “Dear John” letter. He doesn’t read it.
Instead, whenever he returns to his apartment, he daydreams that she is there, waiting for him.
He talks to stuffed animals.
He frequents a food stand, the Midnight Express. The young man of the first tale also goes there. The proprietor gives them friendly, realistic advice; neither of them listens.
The proprietor’s young cousin – the Faye Wong character – works at the food stand. She is the most extreme dreamer of them all.
She plays “California Dreamin’” on repeat.
She decides that she loves the Tony Leung character.
She sends him messages. They are utterly cryptic. For her, letter-writing and telephoning are too straightforward. She breaks into her love-object’s apartment, rearranges his clothes, and leaves extra goldfish in his tank.
Now, how in the heck would a guy ever pick up on those signals? Not even an attentive guy would. And the Tony Leung character is less attentive than most. He doesn’t even notice the surplus of goldfish.
One suspects that Faye (that is the Faye Wong character’s name) is pleased just to dream.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
You might be reminded of Amélie, of the 2001 movie. I find Amélie insufferable. As the IMDb puts it: “Amélie is an innocent and naive girl in Paris with her own sense of justice [my italics]. She decides to help those around her and, along the way, discovers love.”
But no, Faye doesn’t have any self-congratulatory “sense of justice.” Refreshingly, she is just an innocent, naive young hedonist.
Will she grow up? That is the question.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The movie is a stylistic tour de force, but I’m not going to say much about its style, because that’s not what I know how to talk about.
Roger Ebert says:
(1) Faye Wong and Tony Leung are big, big stars – just not in the USA. Even if you’ve never seen them, you can tell they’re stars.
(2) The story as a whole is enjoyable, but you do need to use your brain to make the different parts fit together. Individual sequences go down pleasantly enough. The most delicious one, for me, was confusing at first, but soon enough it made sense. The yellow-wigged woman hires a tailor to measure some middle-aged Indian men for suits. Then she takes them suitcase-shopping. Then she buys condoms. What is going on? A single prop – white powder – tells us the answer.
(3) This brings me to the last qualification. There are “surface aspects” like a movie’s story and the stars who act it out; and then, there are surface aspects, like locations, costumes, and props. Chungking Express is gloriously crammed with props: jukeboxes, suitcases, tinned vegetables, fishtanks, rubber gloves, toy airplanes, liquor bottles, sauce bottles. It’s a feast for the eyes (and not just because there’s so much food). And for the ears, because of the judicious use of pop music. Maybe you do have to be a cineast to get excited by this stuff. I dunno. What I’m confident of is, I could watch this movie again and again and not be bored, just because it has so many shiny things.
But it has nothing like Amélie’s garden gnome that travels around the world. Nothing so twee. Except, maybe, the stuffed animals.
Chungking Express was released in Hong Kong in 1994. In 1996, Quentin Tarantino brought it to theaters in the United States.
The Shop Around the Corner is based on a play by Miklós László.
The Cranberries’ song “Dreams” is in both of these 1990s movies. In Chungking Express, it’s sung in Cantonese by the lead actress, the pop star Faye Wong.
Does Chungking Express owe something to The Shop Around the Corner?
All three of these romantic comedies are about lonely city-dwellers who send each other letters (or emails, or telephone messages). Of these movies, Chungking Express pays the most attention to how long-distance communication can be a device for keeping potential or former lovers at arm’s length. The main characters’ daydreaming is so extreme that, for them, actual contact with another person is almost beside the point.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Chungking Express tells two tales, one after the other. They are roughly equal in length, but not, I think, in import. The first tale is a very long “induction” that prepares viewers for the second tale – think of the story-before-the-story in The Taming of the Shrew – though it is not the second tale’s “frame story.” (Forgive me if I am not getting the jargon right.)
In the first tale, a young police officer dreams of getting back together with his ex-girlfriend.
He performs various (quasi-fantastical) self-harm rituals:
- he jogs until he is too dehydrated to shed tears;
- having endowed the concept of an expiration date with mystical significance, he eats canned foods after their sell-by dates have passed;
- he drinks dozens of whiskies in one sitting (if we judge by the number of empty glasses).
He fixes his heart upon a woman who always wears sunglasses and a yellow wig.
This woman has life-or-death problems which are altogether disconnected from the young man’s fantasies. Unlike the rest of the movie, which is episodic, this woman’s story is narrated with the careful, brisk logic of a heist flick.
In the second tale, another young police officer (Tony Leung) dreams of getting back together with his ex-girlfriend.
She sends him a “Dear John” letter. He doesn’t read it.
Instead, whenever he returns to his apartment, he daydreams that she is there, waiting for him.
He talks to stuffed animals.
He frequents a food stand, the Midnight Express. The young man of the first tale also goes there. The proprietor gives them friendly, realistic advice; neither of them listens.
The proprietor’s young cousin – the Faye Wong character – works at the food stand. She is the most extreme dreamer of them all.
She plays “California Dreamin’” on repeat.
She decides that she loves the Tony Leung character.
She sends him messages. They are utterly cryptic. For her, letter-writing and telephoning are too straightforward. She breaks into her love-object’s apartment, rearranges his clothes, and leaves extra goldfish in his tank.
Now, how in the heck would a guy ever pick up on those signals? Not even an attentive guy would. And the Tony Leung character is less attentive than most. He doesn’t even notice the surplus of goldfish.
One suspects that Faye (that is the Faye Wong character’s name) is pleased just to dream.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
You might be reminded of Amélie, of the 2001 movie. I find Amélie insufferable. As the IMDb puts it: “Amélie is an innocent and naive girl in Paris with her own sense of justice [my italics]. She decides to help those around her and, along the way, discovers love.”
But no, Faye doesn’t have any self-congratulatory “sense of justice.” Refreshingly, she is just an innocent, naive young hedonist.
Will she grow up? That is the question.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The movie is a stylistic tour de force, but I’m not going to say much about its style, because that’s not what I know how to talk about.
Roger Ebert says:
This is the kind of movie you’ll relate to if you love film itself, rather than its surface aspects such as story and stars. It’s not a movie for casual audiences, and it may not reveal all its secrets the first time through. … 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. … 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.A few qualifications:
(1) Faye Wong and Tony Leung are big, big stars – just not in the USA. Even if you’ve never seen them, you can tell they’re stars.
(2) The story as a whole is enjoyable, but you do need to use your brain to make the different parts fit together. Individual sequences go down pleasantly enough. The most delicious one, for me, was confusing at first, but soon enough it made sense. The yellow-wigged woman hires a tailor to measure some middle-aged Indian men for suits. Then she takes them suitcase-shopping. Then she buys condoms. What is going on? A single prop – white powder – tells us the answer.
(3) This brings me to the last qualification. There are “surface aspects” like a movie’s story and the stars who act it out; and then, there are surface aspects, like locations, costumes, and props. Chungking Express is gloriously crammed with props: jukeboxes, suitcases, tinned vegetables, fishtanks, rubber gloves, toy airplanes, liquor bottles, sauce bottles. It’s a feast for the eyes (and not just because there’s so much food). And for the ears, because of the judicious use of pop music. Maybe you do have to be a cineast to get excited by this stuff. I dunno. What I’m confident of is, I could watch this movie again and again and not be bored, just because it has so many shiny things.
But it has nothing like Amélie’s garden gnome that travels around the world. Nothing so twee. Except, maybe, the stuffed animals.
Chungking Express was released in Hong Kong in 1994. In 1996, Quentin Tarantino brought it to theaters in the United States.
The Shop Around the Corner is based on a play by Miklós László.
