Movie Review - Chungking Express

I bought this movie off of YesAsia because I wanted to see something else that had Takeshi Kaneshiro in it. I usually don't purchase stuff "blind", but I really liked Takeshi in House of Flying Daggers (even though the movie wasn't that great) and everything on the internet seemed to point to Chungking Express as a good start to the rest of his filmography.

The copy I bought was a VCD copy, because it was the only "Chinese" copy with English subtitles I could find (according to the edition notes on YesAsia) and wasn't the Quentin Tarantino version. I ended up buying the Quentin Tarantino version at Barnes & Noble last weekend because it was in widescreen and all on one disc (the VCD version is on two discs). I haven't watched the DVD copy through all the way, but there are some translation differences that I'm somewhat disappointed in, most notably in Cop 223's password to his message service: it's "Undying Love" on the DVD, and "Loving You For 10,000 Years" on the VCD. For some reason, "Loving You For 10,000 Years" sounds more appropriate. You'll understand if you've seen the movie. I think the Quentin Tarantino DVD also uses a slightly different cut of the movie, which bothers me. Maybe one of these days I'll get really good in Mandarin and Cantonese that I can watch the movie without subtitles so I can buy a "Chinese" DVD version of the film. But then I'll have to get a Region 5 player, and that causes all sorts of other problems.

Strangly enough I held off watching the movie until after I moved; this was the first movie I watched in California. There's so much stuff I really liked in the movie that it'll take much too long to put it here (and probably ruin the movie). I realize the first part of the film may drag, but it does a great job at setting up the more memorable second part of the film.

There's an idea expressed in the second part of the film (and in the first, to an extent) that I really related to. Cop 663's girlfriend has left him, and he envisions his apartment as sharing the emotional loss with him. "You used to be so chubby!" he tells a thinning bar of soap. "You've lost a lot of weight; you need more self-confidence!"

Then Faye (played by Faye Wong) breaks into Cop 663's apartment and redecorates (among other things), which I believe encourages Cop 663 to get over his heartbreak and helps bring him and Faye together.

Hopefully I haven't given too much away. But I really like that Wong Kar-Wai has expressed this concept - that our surroundings are a reflection of what we are going through internally - so well. There's a lot of hope in this movie, and a lot of hope for refinding lost love. It's beautiful.

There's also the cliched "isolation in the city" theme working here, but it's not too bad to deal with. This is a movie to rewatch just for the little gems of interesting stuff to see and think about. I really like the handheld camera shots, especially when they're choppy (probably just a low shutter speed).

To summarize, I'd recommend finding a copy that Quentin Tarantino didn't touch, although his DVD isn't necessarily bad. The translation differences do bug me, though. It's not that expensive to get a "real" copy from YesAsia, and I think the extra trouble is worth the effort. Watch this on a lonely rainy night with lots of popcorn.