Screening times:
Saturday, March 8, 8:00PM
Wong Kar-wai | Hong Kong | 1994 | 98m
Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitles
with Brigitte Lin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Faye Wong
This screening is part of our Wong Kar-wai Weekends series on Saturday nights in March. In anticipation of the newly remastered and extended classic In The Mood for Love currently in Chinese theatres (and the new television series Blossoms Shanghai), we present some other classic titles from the Hong Kong auteur!
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.
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.
"To Wong, love isn’t something you can talk about; words are inadequate, empty, inevitably reductive. Love is something you see, sense, feel, and Chungking Express is one of Wong’s purest evocations of its excitement and heartbreak." - Matt Noller, Slant Magazine
Winner: Best Actor - Golden Horse Awards 1994
Winner: Best Actress; FIPRESCI Prize - Stockholm International Film Festival 1994
Winner: Best Film; Best Director; Best Actor; Best Editing - Hong Kong Film Awards 1995