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No other director since the (distant) heyday of Alain Resnais has been so attuned to the effects of time on memory, sensation and emotion.” - Tony Rayns, BFI “…A supreme visual stylist but also a poet of the kinds of love that tear people apart and just occasionally bring them back together again…. “Ultimately feels more sweet than bitter, defined by a tone of long-shot hopefulness and a sense that maybe it might all work out for those heartbroken young people…as they watch the first acts of their youth draw to a close.” - Keith Phipps, The Dissolve It also marked a turning point in his work, a shift in direction that is actually signaled within the film, when the desultory underworld revenge narrative fades away and is replaced by a love story as simple as it is delirious.” - Amy Taubin, Criterion
CHUNGKING EXPRESS established Wong’s reputation as a major auteur, the most glamorous and enigmatic since Godard. It was supervised and approved by Wong Kar Wai. This 4K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata and Jet Tone. Anything goes in Wong’s gloriously shot and utterly unexpected charmer, which cemented the sex appeal of its gorgeous stars and forever turned canned pineapple and the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” into tokens of romantic longing. Two heartsick Hong Kong cops (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung), both jilted by ex-lovers, cross paths at the Midnight Express take-out restaurant stand, where the ethereal pixie waitress Faye (Faye Wong) works. It breaks my heart every time.The whiplash, double-pronged CHUNGKING EXPRESS is one of the defining works of ‘90s cinema and the film that made Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai an instant icon. I don't feel the need to defend it from these accusations because the beauty of the film is there on the screen and nothing I have said or could say could really do it justice. It has been dismissed as an exercise in style over substance by many, mainly due to the hypnotic way in which the film is shot and the lack of a real story as such. There are so many essential moments in this film - when Dinah Washington's 'What a difference a day makes' plays over two lovers cavorting, the moments when characters talk to inanimate objects to overcome their loss of love, the brief glances between the second policeman and the waitress across the counter of the fast-food restaurant. Indeed if a level of contentment can be reached at all for these characters - it is a fleeting moment, a memory of a song, the way that somebody smells. While Wong’s 1995 Chungking Express highlights local fears about the 1997 handover from British rulership to the Chinese government, the country has yet to have an impact on his work. Love, for the protagonists of this film, comes and goes between subtle glances - always elusive. The film doesn't pretend that love is all-embracing and constant, in the way so many predictable films would suggest. Chungking Express is a unique expression of such notions of love. Masterful Hong Kong film-maker Wong Kar Wai understands that love is about the unspoken moments between people, the hidden gestures betraying loneliness. The Hong Kong cut was released on VHS/laserdisc by World Video and on VHS/LD/DVD by Mei Ah.
The international cut is Wong's preferred version and has been used for most home video releases. The international version strips out the music (leaving only ambient noise), although "Dreams" still appears at the end of the film.
The original Hong Kong release ran 98 minutes.
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