Also known as
Chong qing sen lin
Lists
- ranked 22 in Hong Kong Film Awards' 100 Best Chinese Films
- ranked 63 in Edward Copeland's Satyajit Ray Memorial Anything-But-Definitive List of Non-English Language Films
- ranked 428 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (August 2005)
- ranked 431 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (March 2006)
- ranked 438 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (December 2006)
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of Guardian 1,000 films to see before you die
- one of TIME Magazine All-Time 100 Movies
It's a film in two parts (the planned third was spun off into Fallen Angels): the first is the more interesting, a film noir romance thriller set in Chungking Gardens, a Hong Kong slum known for its large migrant population. It's still got the quirky disaffection down pat (Takeshi Kaneshiro has a heartbreaking attitude towards pineapple) but works in film references and some gloriously innovative cinematography from Christopher Doyle.
The second, a romance between a jilted policeman and the woman who breaks into his apartment to clean and redocorate, is just as compelling but almost unbearably twee. What I particularly disliked about the experience was that, were this a new American production, it's almost certain that I'd loathe it as another Garden State -- quirkier-than-thou indie rubbish with popular music and empty gestures in place of plot.
I suppose that in a way that's high praise: Chungking Express was so interesting and exciting that, in the fifteen years since its production, it's been subverted and subsumed by the Hollywood Borg.
That said, Wong Kar-Wai still does it better than his imitators ever could. This is what a classic looks like.