Breakups are hard. There’s a reason why they’re such a prevalent subject in art: heartbreak is universal, and it’s often tremendously painful. Going through a romantic breakup is an emotionally complicated experience, which is made apparent in any of the songs, novels, or films dedicated to the subject. It’s true, there’s no shortage of iconic films about heartbreak—(500) Days of Summer, Annie Hall, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are just a few of many. As potent as each of these films is, however, few can compare to the 1994 classic Chungking Express in terms of its ability to completely capture the highs and lows of a breakup while closely examining the eventual recovery awaiting the lovesick.
Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wei has made some of the most romantic movies in contemporary cinema, and Chungking Express is one of his greatest. It’s much more than a typical romance film, and while it checks many of the thematic and stylistic boxes of a romantic comedy, it defiantly carves a path entirely of its own. One can trace an influence back to the flashy, youthful quirkiness of French New Wave films, but Wong’s film is as unique as they get. Its lovable-but-quirky characters navigate a whirlwind of emotions, captured with an infectiously flashy aesthetic and set to an iconic soundtrack of pop tunes.
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Chungking Express isn’t just an excellent romance film, it’s the quintessential breakup film, featuring two separate stories of heartbroken and down-on-their-luck cops who, over the course of the film, find solace in the possibilities of their future. While it gives its characters time to overcome their post-breakup grief, it doesn’t linger long on the misery of the matter. The film is largely about the breakups, but it’s also about everything that comes after: the good, the bad, and the beautiful.
In the film’s first of two stories, Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) waits for a call from his ex-girlfriend May. The manager at the Midnight Express food stand (Chan Kam-Chuen) urges him to move on and find somebody else. Initially, he refuses, and he buys cans of pineapples (May’s favorite fruit) with a May 1st expiration date as a test to see if his lost love will return to him. He gives an unspoken ultimatum to May: if she doesn’t call by the time he finishes all of the pineapple, he’ll accept that the relationship is over. According to his philosophy, love, like canned fruit, has a certain expiration date that cannot be prevented.
Cop 223, whose quirky monologues were inspired by the lovestruck protagonists found in Haruki Murakami novels, puts a timer on his grief. His mourning, just like his failed relationship, has an expiration date. It can’t last forever. When he gorges himself on Big Macs and canned pineapple and sprints across empty baseball fields to stop himself from crying, he’s finding his own method of recovery.
Eventually, when he meets an enigmatic, blonde-wigged drug dealer (Brigette Lin) who herself is heartbroken by an indifferent lover (Thom Baker), he becomes infatuated. She’s drunk and melancholic, and he tries to pick her up the same way he does the several acquaintances that he lazily telephones earlier in the film. What follows, though, isn’t a romantic relationship to bring him out of the depth of his grief. It’s a brief encounter, a short-lived friendship that provides him the connection he desperately needed. He’s allowed a moment of care between two people who need it for different reasons. They help each other at a point in their lives that they need it. They don’t fall in love, because they don’t need to.
When the blonde-wigged woman leaves a message on Cop 223’s pager to wish him a happy birthday, he’s filled with happiness. To be thought about and cared for, if only on that single day, is a reminder to him that life goes on. It’s also a reminder that romantic love, while often important, isn’t everything. Having the two get together on a romantic level would be too easy. It would suggest that one is only able to overcome an expired love once another is able to take its place. Cop 223 finds solace in his encounter with the blonde-wigged woman, but a relationship with her doesn’t replace what he had with May. It doesn’t need to.
From here, the story is over. The film suddenly shifts to a different tale of heartbreak and love. Upon first viewing, the sudden pivot to a different story can feel jarring. Cop 223 crosses paths with Faye (Faye Wong) once the two brush shoulders (with only .01 centimeters between them, the narration suggests), and from here the film turns its attention to the Midnight Express food stall. This time, Faye falls in love with Cop 663 (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) after the police officer is dumped discreetly by his stewardess girlfriend (Valerie Chow).
Like his fellow police officer, Cop 663 sits idly about as he waits to hear from his ex-lover. He talks to a dripping dishrag, telling it to stop crying. The stuffed animals left in his apartment similarly offer no reply to his musings. It's all comically absurd. As he projects his emotions onto the inanimate objects scattered throughout his apartment, he expresses his own longing for his ex. Just like Cop 223's addiction to sprinting, he finds his own outlet for his sadness.
While the entire film is considerably lighthearted for a breakup film, this second half takes an even quirkier approach than the first section. If the first story in Chungking Express is about the grieving stages of a breakup and the eventual recovery one inevitably goes through afterward, the second tale is about learning to love again. Especially compared to the brooding, insatiable longing of Wong’s In the Mood for Love or the toxicity of Happy Together’s unhealthy relationship, the last hour of Chungking Express is Wong’s most playfully romantic. It’s a film that’s effervescent in its charm, its aesthetic hyper-stylized and playful. The camera moves fluidly, often with quick cuts and inventive framing.
At the center of this half of the film lies one of the greatest shots in 90s cinema: Faye watches as her crush drinks a cup of coffee. Around them, the world is abuzz with people moving about in fast motion. For Faye, though, time nearly stands still. No matter how fast everything moves around her, she can only watch him. It’s a shot that captures the feeling of falling in love and succumbing to a deep infatuation with somebody. She stares at him longingly while the world around her continues in a hurry.
Faye’s invasion of the cop’s apartment is a wonderfully quirky moment in a film nearly obsessive in its portrayal of love. She acts inexplicably in an attempt to catch his attention, to get closer to her crush. As she reorganizes his apartment, cleaning it and revitalizing his belongings, she works to help him overcome his heartache, but she also works towards wooing him, albeit in her own highly peculiar manner. Her specific actions don’t make a lot of sense, but love doesn’t necessarily make sense. For Faye, it came out of nowhere and invaded her life. For Cop 663, it seemed to be a thing of the past, but Faye brings it flying back to the tarmac.
This second segment of the film shows how love can take different forms, especially after the end of a relationship. It obsesses over love, from the flashy cinematography to the sounds at the movie's core. Faye Wong's Cantonese cover of The Cranberries "Dreams", which serves as one of the film's several recurring musical motifs, is as blissfully loving as it gets. Dinah Washington's "What a Diff'rence a Day Made" serves as a parallel to both Faye's and Cop 663's experience with love. For each of them, it came suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, and changed them.
Chungking Express is the ultimate breakup film primarily because of its infectiously upbeat outlook. Sure, each cop at the center of the respective stories is heartbroken. They even feel desperate and hopeless in the game of romance. For each of them, however, things get better. One finds solace in simple things: a long jog, a gluttonous meal, two movies watched in a hotel room late at night, an evening spent in silence with a near stranger. The other finds love again, and it’s a love that’s entirely different from that which he had been mourning earlier in the film. He’s able to let go and move on. When encountering his ex at a convenience store, he has no hard feelings. She’s with somebody else, and by then, so is he.
Wong's masterpiece succeeds in portraying breakups largely because of its decision to split into two separate sections. Everybody handles heartbreak differently. Some move on quickly, others take their time. Some fall in love once again, others find inner contentment separate from romance. What matters is that they move on. Sure, they can use their failed relationship as a catalyst for personal change, they can even let themselves feel the delicate pain of heartbreak, but they aren't defined by their past romantic failures.
In a way, watching Chungking Express is akin to falling in love. It feels like recovering from something dark and terrible and finding something beautiful at the end. Life goes on, as the characters in the film find out, and there's plenty to look forward to.