Chungking Express(1994)
Directed by Wong Kar Wai
Directed by Wong Kar Wai
Great writing, jarring and at times inspired camera work and editing.
Great soundtrack. Stories of love, loneliness, and interconnection, simple when taken on their own, and more complex when taken as whole.
At least from what Ive seen of Wong Kong Wai films they defy easy categorization, they are effective and genuine, but also elliptical and odd. 
What begins as an off kilter Hong-Kong crime thriller about drug trafficking, also called the Chungking Express, becomes a heart warming, and snappy Jean-Luc Godard love story.
The two stories only intersecting for a matter of seconds, leaves there meaning open to, and encourages repeated viewings. 
Though elements of chance, connections through inanimate objects and pop culture, and urban romance permeate both tales. 
I enjoyed it emotionally, and ended stracthing my head, but that wasn't a bad thing. 
Was Chunking Express a reference to the drug trade or the restaurant around which everything revolved, whose the blond in the wig? 
But then "The Cranberries" "Only In Dreams" get's played in Japanese who cares?
Why can't their be Amelieesque pixie like women with cropped haircuts, who magically re-arrange your house when your not around? 
Where everyone uses Richard Brautigan like personifications to describe all of the objects of isolation? 
Somewhere over the rainbow between Haruki Marukami and Raymond Chandler, we can all enjoy symbolically charged cans of pineapple.
We can drink in a place where the mysterious feme fatalle's with their blonde wigs might be just drunk enough to fall asleep innocently on your shoulder instead of just shooting you in an alley as might be most convienent. 
Well it's an unlikely world, but I don't mind, anyway.
In the 1st story a man falls in love with a woman who doesn't love him, and who he only knows for a few hours. 
In the 2nd story two people who obviously desire each other, but opt for cat and mouse, for years as opposed to making a move.
Love is not linear on the Chungking Express. 
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