9 Things About My Favorite Movie

More than 10 years have passed since I first saw Chungking Express. I fell in love with it instantly. Now, after a decade and multiple rewatches, I feel it is finally time to elaborate on some of the reasons “why”.

1.

Chungking Express captures perfectly how living in a big city feels for certain kind of people. I like to jokingly call it Introverts in Megapolis. The city might be a place where you are never really on your own — always surrounded by other people, chasing another great opportunity. Yet it can also be experienced on a more personal level that remains almost detached from real-life events. Chungking Express offers a glimpse into how individual minds and souls navigate through the never-ending rush of colors and tastes, and experiences, and contacts, and happenings, that eventually amount to the life in a city of multi-million inhabitants. Chungking Express is not an observation of reality, but rather a look within — a little peek into a stranger’s heart.

2.

In a city of millions, people pass one another all the time, often by a distance as little as cm. Sometimes they collide into each other to continue together, and then sometimes to simply carry on without noticing. The two stories of Chungking Express are completely separate, yet they take place in such a close distance from one another (sometimes literally in the same frame), that you might refuse to believe that they never come into contact in any impactful way.

The Lady in the Blonde Wig from the first story and Faye from the second in one frame

It offers quite a unique perspective — a sense of having no control, of helplessness even. This is a perspective that is vital in any real relationship. The realization of the enormity and the untamable nature of the personality of someone other than yourself can and should be mind-boggling. There is no sugarcoating of this in Chungking Express. For most of the time, characters maintain an illusion of communication with others, when in reality they are only communicating with themselves, with their own dreams and fears, and desires. Only rarely they find within themselves the courage necessary to attempt to actually connect to someone else. And in both stories, it only happens in the very end.

3.

Metaphors. Rituals. And metaphors, and rituals again. The characters invent them, often consciously, to navigate their life. Sometimes they act them out quite ironically as 663 (in Chungking Express both male protagonists are referred to by their badge number) did with the metaphor of an airplane flight as his love-life. And sometimes it is their only mechanism of coping with heartbreak — as in the case of 223 and the expiry dates. 30 canes of pineapples, expiry dates for love and memories, and even for life. The personification of flight attendants’ dress, of bars of soap. In-depth conversations with big fluffy toys. Chungking Express creates a whole web of these symbolic exchanges that are both a bit silly but also carry within them a sense of almost mythical wisdom that exists outside of time. It makes me think about the magical realism of Latin American literature quite a lot.

Even life has an expiry date

4.

The Lady in the Blonde Wig continues to puzzle me even after numerous rewatches. I often wonder how does she even fit in this story? With her down-to-earth pragmatic world-view, caught in the middle of these dreamers that appear to sleepwalk through the reality of the world. She seems to be completely in contrast. But on the other hand, even if she is the only non-dreamer in Chungking Express she is still detached from everyone else, just like the rest of them. On top of that, she is detached by choice, which is far more tragic, if you think about it. Her backstory is the most mysterious one too. A potential love affair with the bartender? Adds an additional layer of meaning to her last scene. I would not be surprised if ever-new interpretations arise on the next rewatch.

5.

Chungking Express offers a curious take on how love works. There is an almost hypnotizing, indoctrinating aspect to it. 663 had this idea of a flight attendant being his ideal love interest, his whole concept of love was built upon this metaphor of the flight.

On every flight, there’s one stewardess you long to seduce. This time last year, at 25 000 feet, I actually seduced one.

The trope you would expect in this case is for the illusion to be pulled apart eventually. Chungking Express tackles this in a completely different manner. It is not what 663 does with the illusion or how he feels about it by the end of the movie. It is how Faye ultimately adopts and incorporates it. When we are in love, we risk losing ourselves. We seek the attention of our love interest and, partly consciously and partly unconsciously, try to reconstruct ourselves to be liked more. It is a dangerous thing. Basically, it is one more way of avoiding genuine connection by putting on a mask, which serves as another illusion. In a way, 663 does the same thing by leaving his job and symbolically abandoning the uniform (curiously, the last thing his flight attendant ex-girlfriend says to him is: “I still think you look better in uniform”). It might be that he has finally given up the illusion (although he still adheres to the metaphor of the flight), but it is also possible that he has merely adopted a new one — the one he associates with Faye. At the end of the movie, he is wearing the shirt she bought him, rebuilding the street-joint she worked in, keeping the letter she wrote to him. Although in his case, it is possible, that by a bit of sheer luck or a meer coincidence, while readapting for the next illusion, he actually found himself.

6.

It is scary, how little 663 knew about his ex-girlfriend. He had no idea what she liked to eat because he never took the risk or the effort to find out. He had no idea what music she listened to, believing the disk Faye had brought, belonged to his ex-girlfriend. This captures perfectly the intoxicating feeling of a sensual love affair. It shuts your brain off, and eventually, you are left in a kind of delusional state, where you honestly believe none of the little details about your love-interest matter because she is perfect for you anyway. Why would you even need to get to know them? You love her anyway. But then the physical attraction wears out, and all you are left with are the delusions of being in love with a person you know nothing about. Yet astonishingly these delusions themselves are even more of an obsession than the feeling of love. 663 was desperately clinging to them as they provided his only real sense of stability. The white bear transformed into Garfield, the bar of soap got bigger and the kitchen cloth repaired itself, yet he continued to hold on stubbornly to the illusion of being left by the girl he loved because it helped him navigate through life. It gave his life a sense of meaning.

7.

The notion of distance is embedded deep within Chungking Express. Some of these distances are physical, like when 223 and The Lady in the Blonde Wig or 223 and Faye came in contact, and others are metaphorical. Some of these metaphorical distances are eventually covered and eliminated, and some are bound to remain there forever. California is an especially interesting case though, as it represents both physical and metaphorical distance between Faye and 663. She is physically away traveling to California, US, while he waits for her at the California bar. But she also decides to run away metaphorically to avoid facing her feelings. Though when they meet again, it seems that 663 has symbolically covered the distance between them. He is listening to California Dreaming just like she did. In this symbolic California of the song, they are finally ready to face each other for real.

“We were in different Californias 15 hours apart.”

8.

The soundtrack is an eclectic mix of different styles, cultures and languages. It adds perfectly to the picture of the enigmatic, wild nature of a multi-million city. And often it speaks for the characters far more explicitly than they do themselves.

What a difference a day made Twenty-four little hours

It’s not every day we’re gonna be the same way There must be a change somehow There are bad times and good times too So have a little faith in what you do

I’d be safe and warm if I was in L.A

Nowadays it is almost impossible to find a soundtrack that would feature actual songs and that would embody them as naturally within the story as Chungking Express did. These are all great songs on their own. Yet when watching the movie, they seem as if written specifically for it.

9.

The street food joint is the place that eventually binds the two stories together. Yet it is more than just a convenient narrative tool to use to jump from one part of the movie to another. It seems to concentrate within itself most of the thematic aspects of Chungking Express. Basically, it’s the city in miniature — always in a hurry, always hungry, never asleep and with a sense of the familiar, yet always only passing by. The owner of the joint, Faye’s cousin, serves as kind of a universal matchmaker, although never really matching any couple together, nevertheless keeping the idea of finding love within this never-ending sea of people a central theme. The place feels a bit reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks too. The same nightly lights. The same sense of detachment. Eventually, it even becomes a kind of beacon, a sort of symbolic place of change for the character of 663. In the very end, he says to Faye about her cousin:

He’s a shrewd businessman — first he sells me fish and chips, and then the whole shop

Yet I doubt 663 needed a lot of convincing.

Faye and 663 at the end of the movie

The joint is also the place, where at the end of the movie, I would argue, 663 and Faye really meet each other for the first time. Faye had an illusion of California as a place she could run away to, but, eventually, she admits that when she went it was nothing special. There is no real running from oneself, and the street food joint was the place they both realized it was time to stop. It just that he understood that a year earlier.