Cop 223 narrates, “a woman wishes me happy birthday. She has called and left a message, “Your friend in room 702 says happy birthday.” They have known each other for 24 hours and their time together is over. He is on the track running in the rain ready to give up. Woman in a blonde wig sleeps because she is fading. Cop 223 consumes food in the hotel room because he is growing. They connect with one another through ordinary and daily gestures. In Chungking Express the characters are sleepwalking and daydreaming. Cop 223 says in the beginning, “We all have our habits…we all get our hearts broken sometimes.” There is a way to go about your day and still be surprised. They will meet again but only after she has been to California and he has become the waiter at Midnight Express. Faye writes Cop 663 a letter that he leaves out in the rain. Shy, she wants to be there when he is not there. She takes the key and lets herself into his apartment. The letter the flight attendant leaves for Cop 663 is read by Faye. The flight attendant has long hair, Faye’s hair is close cut. Cop 663 wishes his girlfriend hadn’t left. She fills Cop 663’s food and drink orders. Cop 663 switches to black coffee.įaye (Faye Wong), the waitress at Midnight Express, listens to California Dreamin’ as loud as her boombox will go. Woman in a blonde wig has her uniform.Ĭop 663 (Tony Leung) orders the chef salad night after night til his girlfriend, a flight attendant (Valerie Chow), leaves him a note and returns his key in an envelope. Cop 223 is vulnerable in his everyday suits. Like Cop 223 she is searching for who she was jilted by.
Before her drug mules ran away, she was in control. Woman in a blonde wig seems to have come out of a film noir in her retro clothing, her purse the same satin as her heels. Three songs play throughout the film, two about dreams and dreaming and the other about time. The two stories in Chungking Express don’t intertwine. He isn’t the prince who wakes her up with a kiss, but a kind person who gives her a place to rest. As he leaves he takes off her heels and with his tie wipes them clean.
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He spent the night in a hotel room high above the city eating and watching old movies on the TV set with Woman in a blonde wig fully clothed asleep on the bed. He calls his birthday a historic day though only one person calls to leave him a message. The image of her with black hair is blurred as though she is a butterfly beating her wings in transformation.Ĭop 223 will be ok because he is a romantic. Like slurred speech, the camera moves in slow motion following Woman in a blonde wig as she looks for the men who have disappeared. One can imagine how busy it is, how big it must be. Hong Kong is a destination, an international city with many languages. The drug mules have vanished with her cargo at the airport. Woman in a blonde wig knows her days are numbered. In mourning, he wants to comfort someone who like him needs to be comforted. He is about to turn 25, and his girlfriend May has not returned. She smokes, shoots a pistol, pushes men around, kidnaps a child for a short while, drinks whiskey, and meets by chance Cop 223 in a late night bar. Her disguise, a belted trenchcoat and white satin heels, has become for her what is real, “If I put on a rain coat I wear sun glasses too.” Her lips are dark red. Woman in a blonde wig channels Sterling Hayden if he were to channel Marilyn Monroe. She outfits them in tailored suits, custom shoes their wives pad their stomachs to look pregnant.
She has hired Indian men living in Hong Kong to act as drug mules. Woman in a blonde wig (Brigitte Lin) is a drug smuggler who loses her drugs. Their nicknames disguise them, make them anonymous.Ĭop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) smiles easily, eats constantly, and pines for May, the woman who recently dumped him. The four main characters may as well be one, related in their fear of being lonely or left. They say they are jogging, really they are running their hearts out in the rain. They frequent restaurants without white tablecloths, bars and clubs shrouded in curtains and lit in neon. They drink whiskey, doubles, black coffee and cola. They eat their meals on the street or don’t eat at all. They have many things to say and no time. All are in communication or trying to be. They speak to inanimate objects, write notes on paper napkins, send voice mails to an answering service, and wear pagers. Characters voice their thoughts in narration. The women in Chungking Express (1994) wear sunglasses. Chungking Express (1994) film notes by Tova Gannana for Far Away Entertainment