53
184
10
The Butterfly
This review may contain spoilers
"It takes time to get used to things"
Chungking Express is more a mood than a story, more style than substance but an entertaining and colorful watch. Lonely and heartbroken people brush up to the edge of madness as they look for love or try to reclaim it. Lives touch briefly with unexpected outcomes.
In the first short story, Officer #223 is attempting to win back his girlfriend May, unable to move on. Most evenings he hangs out at the snack bar using the pay phone to try and get in touch with her through relatives and friends. Each day he purchases a can of pineapple with the expiration date of May 1, coincidentally his birthday, and vows after eating thirty of them if she hasn't come back, he will move on. His love lines cross paths with Brigitte Lin's Blonde Wig Woman who is a drug dealer and smuggler who has been double-crossed by the trafficking mules she has prepared.
The whole May 1 expiration date bit was too on the nose, feeling more and more contrived as the bit went along. Brigitte Lin in sunglasses, a trench coat and armed with a gun was at least interesting. It took a while to care about a guy who couldn't get over being dumped. Brigitte Lin's drug dealer, who was never given a name, was more compelling. I eventually began to vibe with this strange emotional bump in the night. At least it got #223 to stop talking about pineapples. "Do you like pineapples?" Yeah, that's a player move. I honestly would have loved to see this relationship play out with both people on opposite sides of the law.
My interest perked up with the second story when Tony Leung looking sexy in a police officer uniform entered the scene. Officer #663 was also nursing a broken heart after his flight attendant girlfriend soared away for new sexual adventures. Faye, the new worker at the snack bar took an instant liking to him. When his girlfriend's letter with the apartment keys ends up in her hands, the movie nosedived for me. Using the keys from the envelope, Faye began breaking in to #663's apartment every day-cleaning, buying new bedding and decorations, restocking items, and generally making herself at home. #663 with his keen observation skills carefully honed by his years as a cop never noticed the differences. He had a habit of psychoanalyzing his soap and dish towel and thought the soap was just getting fat because it couldn't move on from his ex.
Maybe it's a male fantasy that an invisible woman will clean, decorate, and restock their apartment like little cookie elves but if the roles were reversed instead of quirky, we'd find it creepy. A male character hanging out all day uninvited sniffing a woman's things and making himself at home would be stalkerish and not romantic. I quickly lost interest in this story. And as much as I love the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'"after hearing it for nearly 45 minutes, I'm not going to want to hear it for another decade.
The frozen action overlaid with sped up action, swirly camera action and stop motion running was a director's creativity on overload especially when dazzling colorful lights joined the artistic fray. As I said, this was all about the mood. Different people will see this film through their own expectations. Character development and story resolution were beside the point. How did it make you feel watching the lonely people connecting amid the kaleidoscope of lights?
Rather than being romantic, the stories showed just how desperate some people are for companionship and will latch onto the first person who pays any attention to them. With the exception of maybe the drug dealer, the rest of the characters seemed to being hanging onto their sanity by a thread. Were they lonely because their behavior ran people off or were they behaving strangely because they were lonely? Chungking Express was visually impressive, the narrative-not so much.
9/29/23
In the first short story, Officer #223 is attempting to win back his girlfriend May, unable to move on. Most evenings he hangs out at the snack bar using the pay phone to try and get in touch with her through relatives and friends. Each day he purchases a can of pineapple with the expiration date of May 1, coincidentally his birthday, and vows after eating thirty of them if she hasn't come back, he will move on. His love lines cross paths with Brigitte Lin's Blonde Wig Woman who is a drug dealer and smuggler who has been double-crossed by the trafficking mules she has prepared.
The whole May 1 expiration date bit was too on the nose, feeling more and more contrived as the bit went along. Brigitte Lin in sunglasses, a trench coat and armed with a gun was at least interesting. It took a while to care about a guy who couldn't get over being dumped. Brigitte Lin's drug dealer, who was never given a name, was more compelling. I eventually began to vibe with this strange emotional bump in the night. At least it got #223 to stop talking about pineapples. "Do you like pineapples?" Yeah, that's a player move. I honestly would have loved to see this relationship play out with both people on opposite sides of the law.
My interest perked up with the second story when Tony Leung looking sexy in a police officer uniform entered the scene. Officer #663 was also nursing a broken heart after his flight attendant girlfriend soared away for new sexual adventures. Faye, the new worker at the snack bar took an instant liking to him. When his girlfriend's letter with the apartment keys ends up in her hands, the movie nosedived for me. Using the keys from the envelope, Faye began breaking in to #663's apartment every day-cleaning, buying new bedding and decorations, restocking items, and generally making herself at home. #663 with his keen observation skills carefully honed by his years as a cop never noticed the differences. He had a habit of psychoanalyzing his soap and dish towel and thought the soap was just getting fat because it couldn't move on from his ex.
Maybe it's a male fantasy that an invisible woman will clean, decorate, and restock their apartment like little cookie elves but if the roles were reversed instead of quirky, we'd find it creepy. A male character hanging out all day uninvited sniffing a woman's things and making himself at home would be stalkerish and not romantic. I quickly lost interest in this story. And as much as I love the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'"after hearing it for nearly 45 minutes, I'm not going to want to hear it for another decade.
The frozen action overlaid with sped up action, swirly camera action and stop motion running was a director's creativity on overload especially when dazzling colorful lights joined the artistic fray. As I said, this was all about the mood. Different people will see this film through their own expectations. Character development and story resolution were beside the point. How did it make you feel watching the lonely people connecting amid the kaleidoscope of lights?
Rather than being romantic, the stories showed just how desperate some people are for companionship and will latch onto the first person who pays any attention to them. With the exception of maybe the drug dealer, the rest of the characters seemed to being hanging onto their sanity by a thread. Were they lonely because their behavior ran people off or were they behaving strangely because they were lonely? Chungking Express was visually impressive, the narrative-not so much.
9/29/23
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