Chungking Express
BFI #89
Rent/Purchase
Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.
What critics thought
Wong Kar-wai's two-story Hong Kong reverie earned broadly enthusiastic notices on its mid-1990s American release, with critics drawn to its restless visual style and its oblique, melancholy treatment of urban loneliness. The central split was between those who surrendered to its mood and found it hypnotic, and those who found the whimsy overdone and the plotting too thin to justify the formal games — Ebert himself landed somewhere in between, admiring the craft while warning that viewers not already fluent in art-cinema might simply feel lost. Time and retrospective polls have pushed the film considerably higher in esteem than its original reception alone might have predicted.
“There is no mistaking Wong's talent. His hypnotic images of love and loss finally wear down your resistance as seemingly discordant sights and sounds coalesce into a radiant, crazy quilt that can make you laugh in awe at its technical wizardry in one scene and pierce your heart in the next.”
Peter Travers·Rolling Stone
“You enjoy it because of what you know about film, not because of what it knows about life.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
“Mr. Wong has legitimate visual flair, but his characters spend an awful lot of time playing impish tricks. A film in which a man talks to his dishtowel has an overdeveloped sense of fun.”
Janet Maslin·The New York Times
Genres
Comedy, Crime, Drama
Cast & Crew
DirectorWong Kar-Wai
StarringBrigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Faye Wong, Valerie Chow
ComposerRoel A. García, Michael Galasso, Frankie Chan Fan-Kei
Chungking Express
BFI #89
Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.
What critics thought
Wong Kar-wai's two-story Hong Kong reverie earned broadly enthusiastic notices on its mid-1990s American release, with critics drawn to its restless visual style and its oblique, melancholy treatment of urban loneliness. The central split was between those who surrendered to its mood and found it hypnotic, and those who found the whimsy overdone and the plotting too thin to justify the formal games — Ebert himself landed somewhere in between, admiring the craft while warning that viewers not already fluent in art-cinema might simply feel lost. Time and retrospective polls have pushed the film considerably higher in esteem than its original reception alone might have predicted.
“There is no mistaking Wong's talent. His hypnotic images of love and loss finally wear down your resistance as seemingly discordant sights and sounds coalesce into a radiant, crazy quilt that can make you laugh in awe at its technical wizardry in one scene and pierce your heart in the next.”
Peter Travers·Rolling Stone
“You enjoy it because of what you know about film, not because of what it knows about life.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
“Mr. Wong has legitimate visual flair, but his characters spend an awful lot of time playing impish tricks. A film in which a man talks to his dishtowel has an overdeveloped sense of fun.”
Janet Maslin·The New York Times
Genres
Comedy, Crime, Drama
Cast & Crew
DirectorWong Kar-Wai
StarringBrigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Faye Wong, Valerie Chow
ComposerRoel A. García, Michael Galasso, Frankie Chan Fan-Kei
Rent/Purchase