close
close
Wong Kar-wai on the happy success of “Chungking Express”

When Wong Kar-wai started working on Chungking Expresshe probably didn’t expect it to become one of the representative recommendations given to anyone unfamiliar with Southeast Asian cinema. Whether it’s due to widespread critical acclaim, the personal seal of approval Quentin Tarantino gave it, or simply the usual machinations of social media, that’s exactly what ended up happening, and rightly so.

Probably the film that best captures Hong Kong’s unique urban rhythm, Chungking Express starring Takeshi Kaneshiro, Faye Wong, Brigitte Lin and Tony Leung. The film is divided into two parts, each of which focuses on police officers who find themselves in unusual romantic dilemmas. It is a work of art that addresses the paradoxical loneliness of the modern world, where people are crammed into densely populated areas and yet so isolated.

Chungking Express is a particularly interesting case within Wong’s illustrious filmography because it is not exactly an opus like In the mood for love. Produced during a two-month break from production of Ashes of TimeIt was a project that the Hong Kong author undertook to distract himself from the intense and demanding film he was already working on.

During a conversation with Filmmaker MagazineWong revealed that the success of Chungking Express could not only be attributed to his brilliant artistic vision, but also to luck, which played a huge role. The director had grown up in the area where the film was shot, and therefore had a deep cultural understanding of what he wanted to portray, which helped him get the job done relatively quickly.

Wong began: “For some films, the process is really difficult: the weather is not right, the cast is not right, the location is not right. So a lot happens during production. But for Chungking Expresss, it was the opposite. I would say it was a very lucky film. Why? Well, we shot the film in six weeks. Relatively speaking, it was the shortest production time of all my films. Basically, we shot the whole film in just two locations, one in Chungking Mansions.”

He elaborated on this part of the city, adding: “If you’ve never been to Hong Kong, you should go there next time because I think it’s a landmark. It’s a huge mansion with hundreds of hostels, so people come there from all over the world, especially backpackers. It used to be very different; in the 1950s it was apartments for film stars, but later it became more like guesthouses.”

With a limited budget and a tight time frame, Wong managed to create a complex, beautiful and moving picture of a city he has loved since childhood. That is precisely why Chungking Express is more than just a movie. It’s a snapshot of a place from the perspective of its unconventional residents, who eat expired pineapples and break into their crushes’ homes just to feel a little more alive.

Related topics

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *