“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
The whiplash, double-pronged Chungking Express is one of the defining works of nineties cinema and the film that made Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai an instant icon.
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. Each day Cop 223 buys a can of pineapple with an expiration of May 1, symbolizing the day he’ll get over his lost love. Cop 663 is depressed over a ruptured romance, but when his ex-girlfriend drops his spare set of keys at the café, the waitress lets herself into his apartment to spruce up his life.
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. 1994, Hong Kong, 4K DCP, in Cantonese, English, Japanese, Hindi, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Urdu with English subtitles, 102 minutes. Rated PG-13