Film
Chungking Express
- Director
- Wong Kar-Wai
- Certificate
- 12A
- Running Time
- 102 mins
Chinese-born director Wong Kar-Wai‘s interconnected tales of two Hong Kong rozzers was released in the west under the auspicies of Quentin Tarantino. Undercover cop no. 223 is moping around having been ditched by the girl he loved, when he picks up a mysterious bewigged woman in a late-night bar. Meanwhile, uniformed rozzer no. 633 is so wrapped up in himself he doesn’t notice that the gorgeous girl behind a snackbar counter has fallen for him.
It’s obvious what attracted Tarantino: the constant visual, verbal and musical references to US trash culture; the inconsequential chit-chat; the elegant interweaving of two initially unconnected stories . . . Wong is primarily fascinated with the ways chance meetings shape people’s lives in a crowded metropolis, though be warned that he doesn’t make it easy on his audience: characters frequently seem to swap places and have the same names, there are two women in blonde wigs and another two dressed as air hostesses
Chungking Express is back on screen in the Watershed’s The World of Wong Kar-Wai season.
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