Chinese auteur Wong Kar-Wai is not a director you’d immediately seek out for a cosy feelgood experience. His films delve into loneliness, yearning and doomed love affairs, carried along by a melancholy undercurrent. Chungking Express, the story of two Hong Kong cops reeling from being dumped by their respective partners, doesn’t deviate from these obsessions of his but the quirky romantic comedy also manages to be his most joyous and uplifting offering.
The film has a playful energy and is brimming with offbeat humour. Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro play the heartbroken policemen, both deep in denial over the end of their relationships. We watch them cope in very different ways with their heartache. Kaneshiro’s Cop 223 pines outside his ex’s flat, buys cans of pineapple because they were her favorite food and goes on jogs so his body has no water left for tears.
