Wong Kar-Wai is the (Shanghai-born) Hong Kong director other than directors of high-octane action whose movies make it to America and Europe. The three Wong movies that I have seen (Happy Together, Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love) all star Tony Chiu-Wai Leung yearning for love and not finding it, or at least not securing it. All three have many missed connections. All three are permeated by old American pop music (in the other two, the Turtles "Happy Together" and a Nat King Cole song that is not "In the Mood for Love"; in "Chungking Express," the Mamas and Papas' "California Dreaming (on such a winter day"--in Hong Kong) and Dinah Washington's "What a Difference a Day Makes"). All three seem to me to drag on for too long despite jump-cut sequences and despite leaving many questions about plot and motivation unanswered.
"Chungking Express" (Chong qing sen lin) is divided into two parts of unequal length, both involving a forlorn policeman mourning a lost love. In the first, officer 233 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is trying some very odd magic to make his girlfriend return to him. Her name was (and presumable still is) May and he was born on May 1st 1969. May liked pineapple, so each day in April he buys a can of sliced pineapple with an expiration date of May 1, 1994. He has trouble finding one on the last day, but succeeds, and then goes home to eat the contents of all thirty cans in the hours before their sell-by date arrives.
At the risk of plot-spoiling, I'll say that this does not make May appear. The plan has a much more predictable result. After May fails to materialize in his apartment, Officer 233 goes to a bar and decides he will fall in love with the first woman who comes down the stairs. This turns out to be Brigitte Lin (The East is Red) fresh (more or less) from a Hong Kong action movie sequence in which she is betrayed or has betrayed associates in a drug smuggling operation and--in high heels and a trench coat--outruns half a dozen pursuers, some of whom she shoots.
Officer 233 drinks a lot, goes home with her and eats four take-out chef salads and two orders of French fries while his proposed new love is unconscious. He then goes out jogging and there is a bit of a happy ending for him--though it was not immediately obvious to me that he had not changed his hairstyle and looked different in uniform.
But no, the policeman ordering a chef salad from a place that will also supply fish and chips, pizza, and hot dogs is Officer 663 (Leung). When she is in town, he brings salad to a United Airlines flight attendant (Valerie Chow, though she is not seen for at least another half hour). The counterman convinces him to vary his culinary offerings, and she decides variety in men as well as in late-night cuisine is good and abandons him, leaving a note with his key at the food stand. He does not want to read it, and the pixieish niece (Faye Wong)of the food stand's owner starts sneaking into his apartment, each time adding a gold fish. He does not notice that his fish tank is getting more and more crowded, seems to be cleaning itself, and rearranging its contents.
Like the first policeman, 663 talks to objects (including a dish rag and a bar of soap, but mostly stuffed animals, whereas 233 confided in canned goods). When he returns to find his apartment flooded, he thinks that the apartment is crying for the loss of his beloved. Like 223, he finally shifts to a new potential beloved... and has fresh disappointments.
The lack of interest in plot, the improvised feel, the sometimes fancy camerawork and editing recall Godard of the 1960s to critics, though Wong's films (at least the three I've seen) seem to me more in the thematic domain of mournful memory and mournful ennui of Alain Resnais's films. To me they look more like the 1970s New German Cinema of Fassbinder, Adlon, Wenders (and the films of Herzog set in the First World). Arty, very arty. Unlike those German films, Wong's have very attractive leads. Those who enjoy contemplating Tony Leung in ultrawhite tanks tops and jockey shorts will enjoy "Chungking Express" more than other viewers. (Valerie Chow is not onscreen very much but is drop-dead gorgeous, too.)
I was disappointed that neither of the two main characters from the first part of the movie reappeared, but failure of connection is right up there with "True love exists only in memory" (otherwise, there are expiration dates...) as a Wong leitmotif.
I prefer "Happy Together," in part for Leung's costars in it, in part because is allowed to consummate his passion there (at least early on in it, whereas he has no sex in either "Chungking Express" or "In the Mood for Love"). Watching "Chungking Express" also made me like "Run Lola, Run" even more. In less time it has four variations instead of two and the variations vary more. Despite the occasional whimsy in "Chungking Express" and some brisk action early on in it, both it and "Mood" have too much ennui for me (both in the film pacing and in the character portrayed—also like Resnais).
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