Chungking Express

Directed by Kar Wai Wong

Hong Kong (1994)

Chungking Express takes place in the streets of Hong Kong in the 1990s. It tells the tales of two different love stories; in the first, a cop known as He Qiwu, deals with a breakup and falls for a mysterious drug dealer, and in the second, another cop known only as Cop 663, deals his breakup with a flight attendant while trying to win the affections of Faye, a counter girl at the Chungking Express. The two storylines don't necessarily intersect in a big reveal at the end of the movie, but they show how closely separated people actually are and how people's paths can just miss intersecting with each other.

One of my favorite things about the film is the dialogue. It is filled with many memorable lines that make you laugh or think but are not too painstakingly witty. For example, the mysterious woman that He Qiwi falls in love with (yes, she is so mysterious that she doesn't even have a name), always walks around wearing sunglasses and a raincoat, two very opposite pieces of clothing. She says, "I don't know when I started being so cautious. If I put on a raincoat, I wear sunglasses too. You never know if there's going to be rain or shine."
 

Several film reviewers & critics have compared this film to the French New Wave cinema era. Quentin Tarantino even liked the film so much that he was able to get Miramax to distribute it in the United States. Visually, the film is beautifully done, filled with lots of colors, filters, and visual effects, and all these features are not shown in an over-the-top, "I'm trying to be artsy" fashion. The storylines are not anything too unrealistic either, but show a day-in-the-life portrait without all the frills of a blockbuster movie.

Chungking Express is a very well-done portrait of Hong Kong in the 90s. And as a bonus feature, there is a great cover of The Cranberries' hit song, Dreams, once you make it all the way to the end.