best before: 1 May 2004
Tony Leung is not dead. This is probably not news to you, but it was news to me this morning, when I checked the Internet Movie Database and discovered that, contrary to what I could swear someone told me in a club in Brighton some time last year, it's Leslie Cheung, the other guy from Happy Together who died. Which is fucking tragic in itself, but - is there a way to put this that doesn't sound callous? - I can't help feeling a small sense of relief that it's not Leung, whose impossibly endearing, simultaneously goofy and suave performance in Chungking Express is one half of one of the cutest, oddest couples ever to grace the screen (the other half being Faye Wong).
The first time I saw Chungking Express, it was after midnight and I had insomnia. I was probably yearning desperately to experience either the city (any city) or a great romance. These days, I have the city and more recently, I have the romance, and on watching the film again last night I enjoyed it in a way that was the same, yet different. I still think it's one of the best films to watch in either set of circumstances. That dreamy, lonesome, late night atmosphere is so perfectly realised...
That's before we even get down to specifics, like the impossibly romantic idea that someone could not even notice their stalker carrying out what to many people would seem a violation of their privacy, slowly changing their life for them - and then when they did notice, that they would only appreciate it.
This is also a film which uses popular music to great effect, whether it's reggae, jazz or pop - characters (most notably Wong) listen to the same song or couple of songs over and over again, often at a volume that hinders dialogue, and we get a sense of the importance of these tunes to the characters in a way that cinema rarely achieves. In fact most films don't even bother trying - either pop music is namechecked for purposes of boosting the film's credibility or trying to convey what kind of taste a character has, or the music plays over scenes without the characters even being aware of it. But Chungking Express tells it how it is: the music and the moment fuse together so that you listen to the music to recapture it, or if the moment reoccurs, it makes you hear the music in your head.
"All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey..."
Footnote: oh, the excitement: Wong Kar Wai is making a sci-fi film...
Tony Leung is not dead. This is probably not news to you, but it was news to me this morning, when I checked the Internet Movie Database and discovered that, contrary to what I could swear someone told me in a club in Brighton some time last year, it's Leslie Cheung, the other guy from Happy Together who died. Which is fucking tragic in itself, but - is there a way to put this that doesn't sound callous? - I can't help feeling a small sense of relief that it's not Leung, whose impossibly endearing, simultaneously goofy and suave performance in Chungking Express is one half of one of the cutest, oddest couples ever to grace the screen (the other half being Faye Wong).
The first time I saw Chungking Express, it was after midnight and I had insomnia. I was probably yearning desperately to experience either the city (any city) or a great romance. These days, I have the city and more recently, I have the romance, and on watching the film again last night I enjoyed it in a way that was the same, yet different. I still think it's one of the best films to watch in either set of circumstances. That dreamy, lonesome, late night atmosphere is so perfectly realised...
That's before we even get down to specifics, like the impossibly romantic idea that someone could not even notice their stalker carrying out what to many people would seem a violation of their privacy, slowly changing their life for them - and then when they did notice, that they would only appreciate it.
This is also a film which uses popular music to great effect, whether it's reggae, jazz or pop - characters (most notably Wong) listen to the same song or couple of songs over and over again, often at a volume that hinders dialogue, and we get a sense of the importance of these tunes to the characters in a way that cinema rarely achieves. In fact most films don't even bother trying - either pop music is namechecked for purposes of boosting the film's credibility or trying to convey what kind of taste a character has, or the music plays over scenes without the characters even being aware of it. But Chungking Express tells it how it is: the music and the moment fuse together so that you listen to the music to recapture it, or if the moment reoccurs, it makes you hear the music in your head.
"All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey..."
Footnote: oh, the excitement: Wong Kar Wai is making a sci-fi film...
